Not a damsel in distress
by Hyoko-Ara
Summary: When by some sick joke of the Gods, the female member of team seven is given a sister in another timeline of their reality, not may things are bound to stay the same from the changes made. The ripples made in the puddle of fate, refuse to remain as such and rise to roaring heights as waves.
1. 1 I'd call this a good start, eh?

Akira's brown eyes darted around the forest as she jumped from tree to tree with Chakra enhanced speed.

Her light pink bangs framed a square face, and a sharp jawline which hid below the remainders of her baby fat. The rest of her long hair was tied in a tight bun, which would still remain in place as she crushed her enemies under her feet. A black ribbon that blended in with her dark tunic was the only piece she chose specifically for its dark Lolita vibes.

She wore black biker shorts, which allowed her to kick as high as a grown man's Larynx without restriction, and engineered bandages to absorb the drawback of her destructive punches. Her little innocent smile was the only warning her enemies would get before a kunai found its way from her thigh pouch across their throat in a deep gash.

Her sandals scratched on the dirt path as she came to a halt in front of the gates of Konoha Village.

_"Four years. I wonder what's changed."_

The two Ninjas Guarding the gate took their time appraising the pinkette. Their stances appeared relaxed, but her could detect small twitches of their muscles under their konoha uniforms. Without doubt, if they willed it, her body would be dragged out of there in less than five minutes.

"I have to speak with the Hokage." She pulled out a scroll from her pocket and handed it to the guard.

The guards opened the scroll and their eyebrows rose in the slightest at the bottom of the scroll. Where Akira knew her mentor's butterfly seal to be.

The guards (Who appeared to be called Izumo and Kotetsu) gave Akira their best diplomatic smile. Izumo apologised briefly for a strict new protocol being in place, and motioned Kotetsu to call on a woman passing by to escort their guest to the front of the Hokage's office.

"Hokage-sama." The preteen bowed to the old leader and presented the scroll in stretched-out hands.

The man's sharp eyes softened into a grandfather's gaze as he read through the scroll. His hands lifted the stiff child into a standing position and motioned her to lift her chin, to meet his eyes.

"You've grown up too fast Akira-chan."

"I can't seem to share the sentiment Hokage-sama. Everyone still towers over me." The pinkette's playful smirk busts into a snort as if she'd rehearsed that in case the old man greeted her with the overused line.

The old man tousled her tight bun until it was an uncomfortable mess hanging from her scalp, and sat down in the time Akira fussed over remaking it to look as 'cool' as before.

"So Aurora wants you to graduate from Konoha?" Hiruzen picked up his pipe between his lips and held a lighter to it.

"Yes, Hokage-sama. Aurora Sensei trained me to her best in these four years, but It's not possible for me to graduate from Kusagakure, as I am already a citizen of Konoha."

"I see." Hiruzen puffed out a cloud of smoke as he muttered.

"In that case, I will sort out the necessary paper work with your mentor to attend the graduation exam in seven days." Lord Hokage removes his pipe and puffs out some more smoke.

"Welcome back to Konoha, Haruno Akira."

* * *

She didn't waste her time in making her way back house.

_'__home sweet home.'_ She was hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia, as she jumped onto her balcony and all the voices came back, that made fun of her room being smaller than her balcony. Through the years, the size difference had forced her to place some of her new furniture outside, facing her room. Like her couch, just facing the bunny ears TV inside her room. She and her sister used to make a fort surrounding a tower of snacks for a late-night snacking royale for 10 PM. Right after their favourite show aired on channel 1.

She looked around her room through the full-length window, and smiled when she saw that everything was same the way it was. The tacky purple and pink she had chosen for the walls and her bed, and the books she had bought thinking she would read. Same embarrassing pictures of her with her sister, with her mother , with her father and all of them in one frame.

While she was busy in her own pool of memories, the door of her room opened, and Akira was gripped in a bear hug. Akira laughed and hugged her sister back.  
"I thought I heard some annoying sister's footsteps."

"Don't give yourself too much credit Pinky" Akira grumbles threateningly "If I tried to hide them you wouldn't know your cause of death was even human."

"_Very funny children._" Mebuki Haruno stood at the door frame with a concerned frown and her arms crossed

_'__what monsters are we raising, I don't know anymore'_ Akira voices over in the privacy of her mind with a bad impression of Mebuki

When Sakura released her from the hug, she turned to her mother and saluted.

"Officer Haruno, Platoon 506 ma'am! Reporting from duty!"

"_Hi. Hello, Mother. It's been a while, yeah I missed you too, I couldn't sleep at night from loneli-"_

"I get it! I get it mom! Sorry, I really missed you tough!"

"You bet you did!" Mebuki bent her knees to get on the same eye-level as her daughter "Whoever that goes on without my sarcasm for too long does too. Now shoo! Go get your dad!" She shooed away Sakura and Akira dramatically as she pointed downstairs with the one eyebrow she had learned to move through the years of motherhood.

"I'm actually here dear family. No need to send out a tracker team to look for me." Haruno Kizashi opened his arms and in all of his 6"3 glory, announced "Who's Daddy's little girls?" In a news anchor voice.

Akira ran into Kizashi without a second of hesitation

"Dad. No."Sakura though, didn't hesitate to showcase her cringing at the two.

"Kizashi no." Mebuki seemed to share the sentiment with her daughter as she backed away with clear, animalistic fear in her eyes.

"Dad yes." Kizashi wrapped an arm around a narrow-eyed Akira glaring at the mother-daughter team.

The brown-eyed sister extended her hand in invitation towards her kin. "Come join the dark side my children."

At that, a terribly frightened Mebuki and Sakura, sprinted inside Akira's room, and shut the door on the fist-bumping father-daughter duo.

* * *

Akira was as bored as a decaying organism in a corrupt system filled with systematic abuse of power could be. She was sitting in the Ninja Academy right next to the class' teacher (Umino Iruka,if her name-to-face memory doesn't betray her), who persisted she sat down separated from the normal students as a guest.

Class seemed to be going on smoothly. Every one showed up except for a blond mess of a boy. Every one had done their final homework to perfection...except for the same blond blob. Everyone had immaculately ironed and practical shinobi attire, except for...the same annoying brat with a colour scheme too bright for even the simplest act of camouflage. Was he even a student? If only Iruka wasn't snapping at him or if everyone wasn't on the verge of groaning of familiarity, she would have assumed that Naruto(from the dozen times Iruka had yelled his name in the last half an hour) had randomly wandered into the class. In a room of clearly hardworking and talented candidates for the forces, Naruto stuck out like a sore orange thumb as incapable.  
"You've failed the graduation test last time and the time before that. Tomorrow you get your last chance and you're messing it up again with your undisciplined behaviour and childish shenanigans." Iruka Sensei stopped for breath and waited for some of the blood to drain from his throbbing temples.

Naruto huffed annoyedly in dismissal.

Iruka Sensei turned to the class, as red as a beetroot (his hairstyle really sold the image) and announced that everyone would be reviewing the Transformation jutsu, because a certain infuriating, lazy blond had skipped on the last revision session.

Everyone groaned in protest, but lined up in front of the young instructor anyway, and stood in a ready stance, with Sakura first on the starting side.  
Iruka raised her hand and promptly after he let it fall, a white smoke engulfed Sakura, and she came out of the smoke as a replica of the Sandaime.

"The Sandaime. Good."

Sakura jumped up and fisted the air "Yes! I did it! Sasuke-kun! did you see that?"

The boy on her side merely rolled his eyes in a manner completely lacking any of Sakura's excitement.

"Next, Sasuke Uchiha!"

_'__Uchiha_. So he's the pride and joy of the village. He's definitely going to prove useful.' Akira made a mental note to approach some other time.

Akira Crossed her legs as she eyed the next person. The same blond who crashed the class multiple times, wore a stubborn frown and moved his ears with ligaments Akira was sure he had inherited during birth. It was an interesting mutation though, Akira would have to give him that.

Iruka nods at Sasuke and looks at The trouble making child "Next, Naruto Uzumaki!"

A boy with similar hair as Iruka, standing next to Naruto, muttered "This is a total waste of time, Naruto.", while a girl with impractically long hair and a gaudy purple outfit confirmed his statement with a huffed out "We always pay for your mistakes".

"Like I care." Naruto declared and walked forward dramatically in all his four feet glory with his hands at ready for Iruka's signal.

Smoke promptly engulfs Naruto, and seconds later, he comes out of the smoke a naked woman. squatting just in the right angle to cover her vital organs from the front and behind.

Akira's jaw dropped and she burst out into a silent fit of laughter at the faces the preteen boys in the class made and the gags going all over the place. Iruka Sensei's eyes widened and his nose started bleeding, and he fell back down.

Naruto canceled the jutsu and laughed "Got ya! That's my 'Sexy Jutsu'!"

Iruka Sensei looked as if he was going to detonate and take the village with him to the afterlife. The only person who was subject to this detonation though, was the same blond who made him lose enough blood to appear pale through the crazy blushing fit he was having. "Cut it all the tricks! This is your last warning!"

That moment, Akira knew that even if Uzumaki Naruto was an utter screw-up, he was someone who could have ten seasons of a sitcom made off of his daily life and still have enough for more seasons.

* * *

The next day it was the final exam.

While everyone was celebrating their passing the graduation exam, Naruto sat dejectedly on a swing under a tree just in front of the Academy. He watched everyone run to, and hug their parents, and every once in a while, let out a sigh that might have seemed inconspicuous to him.

She was about to walk towards him but then she heard two girls of about nineteen talking.

"There, you see him?" The first girl said.

The second one said "It's that boy. I heard he's the only one who failed."

"Well it serves him right."

"Just imagine what'd happen if he became a Ninja. I mean he's the boy-"

"Shh! We can't talk about that."

Akira remained in a corner with narrowed eyes stitched to the boy on the swing. What was it that prompted those glares and the hate? It couldn't be that awful! Sure, Akira knew some people even younger than Naruto who had gone on a murder spree because of a trauma trigger, but Naruto was too ordinary to be even considered a danger by a Genin.

"Naruto, right?" She found herself sitting on the ground below the swing in no time. Curiosity getting the better of her.

"Yeah, what's it to you? If you wanna make fun of me like everyone else go on. I'm not stopping you."

"Why are you sitting here alone?" Akira rests her chin on her palm.

"I failed the final exam."

"Damn, that's tough. You wanna talk about it?"

"Why should I trust you?" Naruto squinted at Akira with a deep frown.

Her neck pulsed and for a second, she could almost make out a slit-like contraction of Naruto's light eyes. She smiled at Naruto, despite the tension and said "Would you like to be my friend?"

Naruto didn't budge "Why do you wanna be my friend?"

"Let's say a certain pink-head put in a good word for you." At that, Naruto lift his head and a little glint appeared in his previously empty eyes.

"Sakura-chan told you about me?!"

"The details included! Especially your little stunts with Iruka-san." She hadn't. Never. Ever. But she figured talking about a girl he would glance at every few minutes with a little blush,(everyone knew about his little crush but no one cared enough to entertain the drama) would make him a tad less guarded.

"Oh yeah! I knew she liked the paint prank, I mean...that was supposed to be my last prank as an academy student, but now..." Naruto buried his face in his hands and Akira didn't hesitate to take one of his hands and clasp it in her own grip.

"Giving up doesn't suit you fox-boy."

"eh...? Fox-boy?" Naruto raised a brow at the nickname.

"Yeah, Doesn't anyone call you that? I mean...I would expect it to be a common nickname for you." She traced the fine whiskers on the boy's cheeks and his chest movement stopped sharply "Isn't it?"

"I didn't-I-I never really noticed that before." Naruto stammered and pulled away from Akira in a deep blush. They didn't get to talk much longer, as a silver-haired man approached them from a short distance away and ran towards them — more specifically, towards Naruto.

The teacher — who Akira could faintly recognise from the clone graduation test as Mizuki-san —stopped with a little huff and spared only a fraction of a second observing the pinkette casually touching Naruto's cheek. A fraction later, he had put on a well-trained fake smile Akira could see through with little effort, and crouched down to eye level close enough for a whisper to reach the blond child.  
"Naruto, let's talk."

* * *

Later that afternoon, Akira paid a visit to the local shinobi library.

A little lady with a distinctive, massive red Afro was sat on the other side of the reception desk picking at her neatly manicured nails. She wore eccentric clothes — a flannel shirt with cuffed sleeves and a graphic hand-painted shirt reading: _'__If found, please return to the nearest pub.'_

"Um, hi?"

The lady lift her gaze from the nails, gave a full-body appraisal to the preteen and stopped at the headband in her grip. She finally muttered out a flat welcome and turned back to picking at her nail.

"Can I go and-?"

"Yeah."

"Cool...cool. See ya?"

"No later than 9"

"Gotcha!" Akira leaned towards the entrance and pointed to the shelves with her thumb "I'll be...on my way then?"

She shuffled away awkwardly as the receptionist kept picking at her nails.

She finally arrived at the main hall. The local library may not have been as huge as the KLC (Konohagakure library and centre for learning for the disabled), but she still had to walk for quite a distance to reach the end of the shelves. That made her feel extremely thankful that she would have to walk only a fraction of that distance to reach her research material.

_'__Now...C for Clans...U for Uzumaki.'_

* * *

In terms of sheer amount of material, the library was competent. In terms of organisation though?

Rubbish.

Akira had the immediate primal instinct to find the librarians and smash their skulls open for the mess they had allowed the general public to make of the place. For all dratted deities residing in manors of nudist angels, if they were a part of the forces, they should have had developed the basic good sense to clean up properly after themselves, but she suspected the lack of this instinct had something to do with unhealthy coping mechanisms and complex PTSD in the said forces.

She had been at the library for almost 6 hours since the graduation exams ended, and she had yet to find a single piece of information on the Uzumaki clan. Surely, even if the shelves were horribly organised, there would still be sparse books in the same section?

It was strange. From what she had heard from Aurora-Sensei, the Uzumaki clan was one of the founding clans of Konoha. Shouldn't the village have more information on them? It was as if they were purposely either scattering them beyond being found by anyone, or making the records of the extinct clan a rarity for the one persistent asshole (in this case her) with too much free time on hand who would actually search for the scatters.

Akira glanced at the clock on the wall showing 8:55 PM. Almost everyone who was there initially, had left a while ago. All except the librarian couple and the unsociable receptionist. Come to think of it, the Afro-woman did say she had to leave by 9, didn't she?

Just as Akira began to head for the door, an alarm was sounded. From where the windows were, Akira could make out a blue translucent barrier blocking off clear shapes on the outside. She tried casting a simple clone jutsu, but as she externalised the mix of chakra, it was directly fed to the barrier and it became almost opaque for a short moment.

"We're completely locked in." The young kunoichi sprinted towards the entrance to find the receptionist slouched across the entrance door.

"Do you know why we're locked in?"

"Standard procedure. Probably some criminal on the loose again." The woman huffs

"How long do you think-?"

"I'm not a fortune teller kid." She paused when she saw the pinkette's distraught face "But I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. Last time it took about 4 hours to find and capture the guy." She patted the floor next to her, and Akira didn't waste any time in taking the place.

"How old are you kid?"

"I just turned 11. How about you?"

"21 I guess. It's still a bit weird to say I'm 21. Still feel like I'm 16."

"Fabulous. I mean, at least you don't have to worry about your parents being worried you're not home."

The woman raises an eyebrow "_That's _what's got you so worried?"

Akira picked at her loose baby hair on her neck "I mean...yeah? I didn't tell them I was coming here. They can be a bit overprotective, but I always take some medicine wherever I go."

"You sick or what?"

"Genetic illness. But I'm fine as long as I...take these" Akira searched her bag for the pack of medicine Aurora-Sensei would send her from Kusa, but they didn't seem to be in her bag.

"Shit." the pinkette searched furiously without any concern for the language she was using in her muttering "I forgot to put them in my bag." Akira buried her head in her hands and dragged back her tight bun hard enough some more hair came loose.

"Hey. Don't worry, nothing's gonna happen." The Afro-haired woman rubbed her back and looked around for a distraction. After a few seconds, she took out a photo of her and a girl drinking boba tea.

"This is my girlfriend, Inori. We're getting married in a few months, and we've already talked about adopting from the Konoha orphanage."

"You two look cute together. I can totally see you married." Akira relaxed a bit at the woman ruffling her enormous Afro.

"It's weird, I know your girlfriend's name and your future plans, but not your name."

"Oh, right. I'm Ruri, your local friendly bookworm. Nice to meet you...?"

"Akira. Your local friendly kunoichi." Akira smiles at Ruri

"You were here for a while you know. I know today was the graduation exam, but why are you so hell-bent on training to exhaustion?"

"I wasn't training if I'm being totally honest with you." Akira pauses, contemplating whether she should tell Ruri she was looking for info on the Uzumaki clan "I was looking for a certain clan, but I can't seem to find anything on it."

"I'm a History major. Maybe I can help you with whatever you're looking for while we're here."

Akira looks around to check if anyone is near them "Do you know anything about the village's founding clans? I heard the Ichidaime's wife was a clan woman."

"Oh yeah, Mito Uzumaki. Deeply feared kunoichi — you wouldn't want to get on her bad side."

"Uzumaki?"

"You don't know anything about them? Don't they teach you about them at the academy?" Akira shook her head "Oh I guess...they didn't dwell too long on the Uzumaki to be honest, they were all wiped out a while ago and not many people have bothered to go to Uzushiogakure. Even for the sake of History."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Probably. There are definitely some traps left over from the village's defense line, but not many people to defend the rubbles. There aren't many Uzumaki left in the land of fire, at least those who aren't nomads."

"I mostly wanted to know if they had a certain kekkei-genkai. They seem like a mysteriously clan."

Ruri bites her lip "I don't remember anything significant on their kekkei-genkai and stuff, but what we mostly learned was that they were sealing masters. That's basically the reason for their wiper-out; Too much power. Intimidated masses directed an invasion that wiped them out overnight. I wouldn't blame them though. They were exceptionally strong, especially their Bijū sealing."

Akira mentally flinches at the mention of sealing Bijū. Somewhere in her mind, someone screamed something about the kyuubi invasion, and somewhere in the back of it, the whiskers on Naruto's face still bothered her. She still needed one last piece of information to be able to put this two and that two together.

"I see...but, did we have any other Uzumaki as Konoha citizens after Mito Uzumaki?"

"It's not very well-known with the youngest generation, but the Fourth's wife was an Uzumaki. She was pregnant with his child when the Kyuubi attacked, I was about your age when she let me touch her baby bump." Ruri bites her lip and chuckles at the memory, but instantly her eyes lose their spark "Shame that they all died that night. Uzumaki Kushina, the Yondaime and their unborn child. A lot of people were orphaned, but from what I've seen of the death records, there was a group of nomad Uzumaki visiting at the time. Probably Giving their blessings to Kushina and Yondaime-sama for their new member. But they all ended up dying when they were sealing the Kyuubi."

"Who did they seal it into?"

"We can't talk about that. It'll be a violation of the decree made by the Third after the attack." The Afro woman mumbles in a sarcastic tone "Most clan members can probably violate it as they please. But us civilians? Nah forget it. They'll probably throw me in some abandoned cell and torture the hell out of me 'till I'm dead."

"It's fine. I'm not asking you for that. Thanks a lot for everything, i really like learning about Konoha's history." Akira forced a polite smile and looked for a change of subject.

"So...I heard some country accent leaking out there. Eh?"

"Oh fuck me."

"Sorry I'm not legal yet."

"You know what?" Ruri slides onto the floor "Let the earth swallow me whole."

"I could help you with that if the barrier didn't mooch off my chakra."

At that Ruri points a lasting middle finger towards the roof.


	2. 2 Konohamaru, right?

Disclaimer: We don't own Naruto. If we did all the characters would be positively fucked.

Akira pinched the bridge of her nose, already feeling a headache coming at the crack of dawn. Naruto screaming at the top of his lungs at the photographer in the other room wasn't helping with her brain not exploding from sleep-deprivation either.

"Listen Kid, are you sure you want me to take your picture like that?" The photographer screamed in between Naruto's rants.

"Just do it, come on already! Come on!" Naruto shut up for approximately ten hot seconds. Probably to not mess up his 'awesome' picture.

A snap of a photo later, Naruto tripped out of the room with a smug grin eating away at his cheeks, and Akira almost choked at the...She didn't even know what to call it. A make-up catastrophe would be appropriate, but it would be disrespectful to the lipsticks ruined for making those giant-ass shapes to even consider it make up.

"Damn Naruto. They might give you a job as an MUA if you go in like this." Akira gave out a little snort at the boy's broken trance as he finally noticed another presence in the waiting room.

"Oh! Hey...I don't remember your name. What's an MUA?"

Akira stabbed herself with a dramatic swoon "I'm hurt! We talked and shared a class yesterday and you _don't _remember my name?!"

"You never told me Dattebayo!" Naruto pouted and scratched the back of his neck

"Relax dummy. I'm kidding."

"Hi kidding, I'm dad."

Akira's mouth hung open as she gave the blond a flat look.

"What?! That was awesome!"

Akira picked up a brochure in the stall next to the seats and bonked Naruto on the head.

"Never tell dad jokes again. You didn't do the deed in the womb."

Akira threw the brochure to the side and swore at the shadowed printed letters on her palm. She would have to work harder on chakra control.

"hey hey. Why is your hand all funny?" Naruto grabbed Akira's hand and Turned it around to see the letters from the 'Konoha traveller's guide' printed right back on her palm.

"You've never had a chakra print?" Naruto shakes his head

"You're lucky. Printer ink usually gets stuck to our chakra and leaves a faint print behind on our hands. Probably cause we use chakra most in our hands. They're really hard to get off as you can see. Ever wondered why ninja almost never use printed documents?" Akira explained as she rubbed at the printed letters on her palm with some killer intent leaking.

"So you guys are bothered by a little stain? That's lame." The boy huffs and sneers in Akira's face. "Guess you're not that strong after all."

Akira threw her arm around the blond's neck and held him in a strangulating headlock.

"I'll fuse you with the concrete if you as much as chirp another word."

"Cho..king!"

* * *

Akira and Naruto were back at the academy, where the pair were sitting on a chair in front of The Sandaime and a Jonin on guard duty.

The Hokage looked at Naruto's picture with an unsuppressed deadpan. The boy's makeup disaster seemed to strike pain and suffering into the fragile heart of the Jounin wearing an inconspicuous idol smokey eye.

"At first you know I couldn't figure out exactly how to do it. It took me like three hours to work it out. But finally I got it- like an art project on my face. Only cooler." Naruto buzzed animatedly.

"Take it again." The Sandaime's wrinkles grew deeper.

"No way!" And deeper.

"We can't accept this photo." And to the point her was looking like a grey shrivelled plum.

Akira clicked her tongue and threw her shoulders up innocently at the Sandaime and the jounin's murderous aura.

_You were supposed to be the sensible one! Why didn't you stop him?_

"Don't get me wrong. It's offensive to even call that a 'makeup' disaster. But I ain't his mom."

"Hey! What do you mean offensive?!" Naruto fell back onto his chair and crossed his arms with slumped posture. He and the Hokage had a stare-down contest, while Akira wondered just how many times a blood bath was evaded just by the old man's (obvious) affections towards the kid.

Really, what was she thinking when she thought there was a sliver of maturity in this blob of fashion disaster?

Before Akira had time to react, Naruto had already performed the hand signs to a jutsu she was faintly familiar with

"Transform!"

"NARUTO STOP."

Akira quickly closed her eyes, knowing what was to come next. And true to her expectations, Naruto shouted "Sexy jutsu!" Seconds later. She only allowed herself to open her eyes when she heard the Hokage say "That's the sexy jutsu you say? Very tricky. Much too tricky. Don't do it again.".

Also...was that blood on his handkerchief?!

Naruto ruffled his hair and smiled sheepishly as Akira walked towards him and stood behind his chair. She cupped his chin in her hands from behind and tilted the boy's head back.

" I swear I will transform into food and eat myself if you don't get this over with right this second." Akira made sure to whisper loud enough for the Sandaime to also hear. He wouldn't want a re-enactment of the 'incident'.

"Where is your headband, Naruto? You're supposed to be wearing it." Akira caught a hint of rush in the old man's voice even though he appeared completely calm.

Naruto rubbed his goggles lovingly and said "Oh i'm not wearing it until the orientation. I don't wanna mess it up."

"So, you want your headband nice, but your photo which is supposed to identify you makes you look like a clown. It's for Ninja training and missions which is the key to your future." The Hokage picked up Naruto's Picture "Look at this picture! You can't even tell who it is!"

Naruto huffed. "Well fine! How was I supposed to know all this complicated stuff anyway?"

Akira, Naruto and Lord Hokage's eyes snapped at the door as it slid open and a small figure whizzed past the door with a war cry.

"Old Man! I challenge you!"

Saying this, the boy started running towards the Hokage continuing his declaration of Hokage-hood.

I'm going to defeat you and become the fifth Hokage!"

The boy promptly tripped down and face-planted on the tatami flooring. Naruto and Akira exchanged a 'what the fuck is going on' look when the little blob started weeping.

"Hey, are you alright?" Akira asked softly.

A Jonin Akira recognised faintly as 'Ebisu' rushed into the room with and odour of sweat coming off him from the short distance (she really struggled not to cover her nose or wrinkle it when he walked closer). The boy got up in a sitting position and rubbed his face and started shouting again.

"Something tripped me!"

"Are you okay, Honourable Grandson? And by the way there's nothing there for you to trip on it's pretty flat." Ebisu crossed his arms and scanned the preteens passively.

The little boy walked towards Akira and pointed his finger at them and said "Okay, you tripped me! Who are you?"

"Hi?"

"You tripped on your own feet Konohamaru, you dork." Naruto grabbed Konohamaru's cheek (which was positively pull-able with how much chub it had) and twisted it a few times until the kid wrestled his way out of the death-pull.

"Some one you know?"

"This is Konohamaru. He's always challenging me and Old man to fight."

"Oh yeah. By the way, don't ever call him 'honourable grandson'. He will hate you forever." Naruto whispered loud enough so only Akira would hear.

"dully noted. When is he gonna stop shouting by the way." Akira pointed at Konohamaru, only thrn noticing an enormous scarf longer than his own height dangling off his neck. Konohamaru stopped to take some deep breaths for round two when he acknowledged a conversation going on between the teo without him.

"Naruto-nii! What are you talking to that tripper about?!"

"Calm down brat!

"Are you on her side?!"

"Damn right! You tripped on that stupid scarf!"

Konohamaru gripped his scarf and opened his mouth to defend its integrity when his eyes gained a glint and a smirk spread across his face like a highly contagious virus.

"Oh Boss...now I see! How didn't I see it before?! She's your girlfriend! The pretty pink-haired girl you're always talking about! Sakura? Some thing?"

Akira slowly turned her head towards a sweating Naruto who just pleaded with enormous puppy eyes

_Please play along_

_no way. I've got questions blondy_

Akira gripped Naruto's ear and dragged him out along with her with an overstretched smile and a shout of "Bye!", ignoring his protests, while the other ninjas, and the little boy- Konohamaru- stood in the quite room awkwardly.  
"What kind of girlfriend is she?!" She heard Konohamaru shout from inside the Hokage's office as she turned to the running boy beside her.

"What the fuck?"

"Please don't kill me! I can't die before I become Hokage!"

"You will take that damn dream of yours to grave if you don't explain in detail what the hell that was." Akira gripped Naruto's collar and whispered "_Now._"

Naruto gulped."I like Sakura-Chan. I've really liked her a lot for a few years now and Konohamaru would ask me about the academy and I would end up talking about her, I swear it wasn't intentionalpleaseforgivemeidon'twannadieyetI'mtooyoungtobedead!"

"Somehow I caught all of what you said, but I'm not letting my sister be your girlfriend." She adds "without her knowledge" when she sees Naruto's face drop.

"Come on Foxy." She circles her arm around his shoulder "Let's show that kid just how good a girlfriend _Akira _Haruno is. "

* * *

When Konohamaru recovered from the preteens leaving, Ebisu started his lecture.

"Listen carefully, you are the honourable Grandson of the honourable Third Hokage. You cannot let a brat like him to draw you into a fight, even though he deserved it. You see he is far beneath you, you must not stoop to his level. As your Elite Ninja Trainer I am never wrong which means I am always right. I am far above the other trainer. So heed my every word. Your goals to become the next Hokage and I can teach you the best way to do it. And due to my great skills I can teach you quickly and easily at top which you must always. You understand me, right Honourable Grandson?"

Only then, Ebisu noticed that Konohamaru had disappeared. He looked frantically around the room from the floor to the roof to the windows to the Hokage, who there up with shoulder and went back to lighting his pipe.

"Where'd he go now?!" Ebisu put a hand to his sweaty forehead and once again in the day, reminded himself of his burning passion for kids.  
"he followed Naruto and Akira." Hiruzen muttered in-between pokes.

"That's a disaster! This was his 20th attack today; he's going to start using that troublesome brat's closet soon enough!"

"Ebisu." Hiruzen rubbed his temple " You've been spending too much time with Shikaku."

Ebisu planted a hand on his forehead and with a bow, shunshined out of the room.

Hiruzen sighed and put his forehead on the table

_'How did he grow up to be like that? My grandson's definitely determined. That was his 20_th_ sneak attack today. And if he starts running around in company of Naruto and Akira, he's sure to even get worse. Naruto wouldn't teach him anything really bad, would he? " _He definitely hoped Akira had decided to be responsible and mother the kids around. Otherwise, Hiruzen was sure Naruto would teach konohamaru his signature jutsu.

He shuddered at the thought.

$$$

Naruto and Akira were walking in an empty alleyway when they heard footsteps coming from behind them. When they turned, they found a poorly disguised figure with a rock-like drape.

Akira and Naruto shared a look, and eyeballed. Both of them ignored it and walked on.

After walking for some more time in the street, Naruto and Akira were both tempted to actively try to lose the boy, but Naruto kept shaking his head and saying "He's a kid. He's gonna get lost in the red light if we lose him now." . Konohamaru kept following them like a lost puppy for at least ten minutes, when both of them turned, and locked their eyes on the poorly disguised boy with a 'wall' drape.

Naruto pointed at Konohamaru and shouted "I know you're following us! Just give it up!"

Konohamaru kept trying to lay even flatter against the wall, but he kept shaking and revealing bits and pieces on himself.

The preteens shared a look and Akira sighed

"We're gonna leave you here if you keep following us."

The little boy laughed and pulled down the the camouflage cloth, revealing is face. He said "You saw through my disguise again Naruto-nii. You're as sharp as ever!

Konohamaru walked towards Naruto and Akira and said "Okay I'll be your apprentice and you two will be my trainers."

"Huh?" Akira said as she blinked her eyes.

"And afterwards, you gotta show me how to do that sexy Jutsu thing you did on ji-jii!" Konohamaru said excitedly.

Akira narrowed her eyes at the mention of the 'sexy jutsu'.

"This is some kind of joke, isn't it?" Naruto huffed and crossed his arms

"No! I need a new trainer! Please Boss!"

"not again!" Naruto said.

"You two are the boss! Boss! Boss! Boss!" Konohamaru said.

Akira grimaced "I think I like my name much better. No need for Boss or anything."

"No!" Konohamaru whined. "You are nii-san's girlfriend! You should have a cool title! Like... Madam! Yeah, you are our madam!" Konohamaru said.

Akira and Naruto both shared look.

"Well." Naruto scratched his head and laughed 'How can we refuse?"

* * *

konohamaru looked back and forth between Naruto and Akira, his stare becoming more and more intense by the second.

"what are you staring at kid?' Akira crossed her arms

"Are you sure you're Really nii-san's girlfriend?"

"The one and only."

"Then why don't you act like it?"

"'Cause unlike most of the people who have someone gaki, I still like my dignity where it is."

"You're just embarrassed then."

Akira bonked Konohamaru on the head and disappeared off to a mango stall as he rubbed a swollen spot on his forehead.

"So, boss."

"Nii-san."

"Nii-san...how long?"

Naruto felt sweat starting to come from his forehead."We should wait 'till Akira-Chan gets back. For any relationship questions!"

"Not that! When. Are. You. Teaching. Me. The. SEXY JUTSU." Konohamaru shouts at the limit of his lungs and Naruto covers his mouth between the stares older people were giving them and the ninjas who were previous victims of the said jutsu.

"Keep it down brat!"

"why...?"

Naruto had the sudden urge to wipe sweat off his forehead and run off into the far distance.

"Shinobi don't announce what jutsu they have! The surprise their enemies with them!"

While Naruto dragged Konohamaru off to the side of the market, Akira sped off to where she had sensed a certain chakra signature.

* * *

"What are you doing here?!"

"Scouting mission." The shadow of a person reflected on the ground from high up in a tree. "Aurora-Sama's orders."

"She said she'd hold off until I secured our position in here!"

"The council doesn't have time for a little girl who wants to save her family. She was already under pressure, the small amount of time you had was a miracle, she pulled out everything she had just for that. I trust you gathered as much as you could I that night?"

Akira thought about the lock-in at the library. Then looked at Aoi.

"There was nothing to be found. I want my family safe and that is all I'm here for." She put her hands in the hand signs for Shunshin when Aoi came down at the last second and punched her in the solar plexus. Akira doubled over at the hit and grinder her teeth to stand back up.

"I can smell your lies from a mile away girlie. don't try me."

She bit the inside of her cheek. "I wouldn't dream of it. Unless it's for my death in front of my mentor's jury. How does that sound _Aoi_?"

The older male didn't break his glare, but she saw something else grow inside of it.

_Doubt_

_Of course your damn pride will take a hit if you go to prison because of a worthless fraud for an heiress._

Aoi broke the intense glare and turned to shunshin away, but turned back to Akira.

"Safe from_ what_?"

Akira took a long glance at the blue-haired man.

"Not from _what_. From _who._" She channeled her chakra. "I'll see you later then."

Akira Shunshined away before any answer was muttered.

Somewhere still in the Konoha Market:

"Konohamaru?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't you think Akira-Chan is taking too long?"

"I heard that women take a lot of time shopping."

"But wasn't that for clothes? How long does it take to buy a mango?"

Konohamaru stayed silent with his head hung

* * *

Hiruzen was staring at the Homage faces when he heard Iruka's voice.

Iruka said "Hokage-Sama, I've been looking for you."

Hiruzen shifted to face the young Chunin. "For what purpose?"

"It's about Naruto. Did he resubmit his photo?"

"Akira made sure he did." The Sandaime let out a puff of smoke between his words.

"You know I gave him a big lecture the other night at the ramen shop. But he's still beaming because he became a Genin. He thinks that's going to change things...That people will stop looking down on him now."

"I fear his dream may not come true." Lord Hokage said. "People don't change that easily."

"No." Iruka crossed his arms."They don't."

"I've known you since you were a child Iruka. I have seen the barriers you had to break in order to become who you are today; and I applaud you for your perseverance." Hiruzen stood up and walked to the window of his office. "However, your situation is vastly different from Naruto's."

"As I am aware sir. I'm ashamed that even I harboured some amount of prejudice towards him until very recently." Iruka slouched and stitched his stare to the ground.

"And you are brave for admitting to your mistake. However...people don't like to be wrong. Especially after all these years."

"What do you mean sir?"

Hiruzen pinched between his brows."Twelve years ago, I passed a decree that forced people to keep quiet about the incidents of Naruto's birthday."

"You did what you could sir."

"And I did the wrong thing." Hiruzen took slow steps around his office, his demeanour stiff and cold."People need something to be mad at; to shift the blame of their own misery instead of put an effort into dealing with it. When the Kyubi destroyed our village, people assumed that she had set the beast free on purpose."

"Hokage-Sama, do you mean-"

"Yes Iruka. They don't blame the Kyuubi half as much as they resent Kushina for setting that beast free. They feel betrayed; that one of their own set death and misery and destruction on their home willingly."

"But Naruto...?"

"I will leave that to your own imagination Iruka-san." Hiruzen paused and locked on his own reflection in the polished glass. When did he get so old? When did all these wrinkles appear? Or the bulging veins on his hands?

"Do you know what the ancient people say about someone like Naruto?"

"What sir?" Iruka asked.

Hiruzen pauses and glances into the stone dead eyes of Minato.

"When the people reject someone's very existence and then look at that person, their eyes become cold. Cold as an ice storm in the deepest winter."

"But that girl- Akira -, does she know how others treat him?"

"She is much smarter than she lets on Iruka-san. I trust she's already picked up on it and befriended him out of curiosity."

"Is she any danger to the village security?"

"You question my judgement to allow her to return?"

Iruka hangs his head. "No Hokage-sama, that was not my intention."

Hiruzen turns away from the Hokage monuments to face the young chunin again.

"Akira was born sick. For the first eight years of her life, she was constantly in and out of the hospital. There was no chance for her to remain alive. But she wanted to prove herself as an outstanding kunoichi -and she was if not for her health. Her mind is amazing, how adaptive she has always been, and how eager she always is to learn something new, regardless of what it is. Aurora saw that spark in her. She took her under her wing for four years, and since Aurora is a great Iryo-nin (medical ninja) herself, everyone was sure no harm would come to the girl. Now she's back, and looks better. But she hasn't fully recovered."

"Will she stay alive for much longer Hokage-sama...?"

Hiruzen crossed his arms and relit his pipe.

* * *

The sun had begun to set. Akira was leaning onto a tree while Naruto and Konohamaru filled her in with what happened when she was gone.

"Aw man!I couldn't even beat that snobby trainer of mine! I wanna be Hokage so bad, But I keep messing up. Why can't i do it?" Konohamaru said.

"You really think it's that easy? To be a Hokage you've to the greatest of all Ninjas..."

Akira blocked out their conversation and stitched her eyes to the ground. What could she do? If Aoi was in Konoha then things are probably proceeding much faster than she thought.

"For what?" Konohamaru asked. He seemed to be genuinely perplexed by the idea of why he should take on the pain and the misery.

"For the person you can be. If you come out of it. Be kind enough to not deny yourself the growth." Akira said softly, ignoring the growing pain where Aoi had punched her.

A soft breeze blew the leaves around in aged willows.

Naruto turned towards Konohamaru and grinned.

"By the way, there is no easy way to becoming a Hokage. Dattebayo!"

Konohamaru narrowed his eyes and turned around and said "Huh. Who do you think you are, anyway lecturing me like that." As if he had just had an epiphany, the little boy jumped off from his seat and pointed his finger at a grinning Naruto. "Nii-san! I'm not your apprentice anymore! From now on, we're rivals!"

They both smiled at each other in a private shared moment.

"Well we can't be your trainers anyway. We get our teams assigned tomorrow." said Akira

"Man, I hope I get to be in a team with Sakura-Chan!" Naruto clasped his hands behind his head while his mistake sank in.

"Nii-san...aren't you dating this cotton candy buffalo here?"

Akira was too occupied with the look on Naruto's face to even want to care that Konohamaru just called her a buffalo. the blood had drained from his face and he was sweating buckets from everywhere.

"Wait...you lied to me! You're not dating this tripper, you aren't even close to dating! You still like that Sakura girl!

"Kid...I thought we agreed that you tripped on your own feet." Akira put on her best deadpanned look

" ' !"

Akira bent down to Konohamaru's eye level and pointed at Naruto. "See that yellow-ass target? He's the one you want. I was just helping out a friend."

Konohamaru seemed to contemplate this for a moment. "Why should I?"

"Dango?"

"You just got yourself a deal cotton candy!"

The last she heard was Naruto shouting at her and spouting death threats. Before a pang made her double over on the street.

_"God damn it Aoi."_

* * *

Black spots were dancing on Akira's visions.

_"Just a bit further," _ She urged herself as she walked towards her house, and knocked on the door.

Sakura opened the door and looked at her with a raised brow.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say that you were an enemy ninja. Congrats window walker, You broke your own record." Sakura dried her hands on her apron and walked inside.

Akira would have normally had another biting response to her sister's sarcasm, but the only thing on her mind was the awful pain spreading in her abdomen.

"I was helping Mom in the kitchen. The dinner is ready. Wash your hands and come quick." Akira nodded, too drained to answer Sakura.

"Cat got your tongue?" Sakura leaned on the kitchen counter and watched in horror as Akira gripped her stomach and tensely doubled over with all colour drained from her face.

"Akira! keep your eyes open, I'm gonna call your medic!" Akira blinked in response, but wasn't quite sure her sister caught it. The last moment she remembered before spots filled her vision, was a pallid Sakura shaking her violently and screaming at her to keep her eyes open.


	3. 3 Enter: Team 7

It was a sound she knew well. well enough to spot within 20 miles of her

without fail.

Her eyes snapped awake, pupils readjusting to the bright and airy room of the

hospital. Its white ceiling and walls were painted with odourless, top quality

paint every few months to keep it looking fresh and new. The room had very

few decorations. only ones that were telling of what you might be thinking

about if a psychiatrist pays you a visit. A small plant was always very well

tended to and nourished. It was a great companion to someone who

couldn't sleep at all at night after family visits, and completely bugged with

small spy cams. She was convinced this was the whole room's description,

even without being fully awake. eight years of hospital visits ingrain the make

up of every room like hot iron on skin if you spend enough time there.

There was an IV drip attached to her arm, which she deﬁnitely wasn't going to

yank out. lesson learned when blood squirted out like a whole functional

fountain that one time she did. Instead, she gripped the stand, massaged her

numb feet a bit, and stood up in her wobbly glory with a shaky walk to the

front door.

The hospital was all the same. Which was a complete bummer, since she was

sure if she toured the place long enough, she would relive enough

hospital PTSD to last her for another four years. The only thing diﬀerent, was

the little blond boy asleep on one of the uncomfortable armchairs with one of

the rock-hard cushions balanced on top of his one folded knee to his chest.

'The hell..? He was here all night?"

She moved towards the sleeping blond on tiptoes and nudged his shoulder

gently.

"Naruto...Wake up."

The blond shifted a little on the cushion and muttered something

incomprehensible under his breath.

"Naruto...Akira's awake."

He took in a snort and woke up coughing on his own saliva and trying not to

die of asphyxiation.

"Aki-Akira-chan?!" Naruto coughed and hacked crazily, "You're awake?!"

"No, it's my ghost wandering these haunted walls. wat'chu up to?" Naruto was

still having serial coughs, but he managed to pass her a completely dead smile

and a thumbs up, completed with impossibly dark eyebags under his eyes and

reddening skin.

After he calmed down and found his voice again, Akira sat down next to him

and stitched her gaze to the white tiles of the hallway.

"so...foxy. What've you been up to?"

"Not much. I went to your house to give you some Ramen. Sakura-Chan was

just back from the hospital and told me you were sick."

"It's nothing you need to worry about foxy." Akira grabs his hand and drags

him from the couch.

"Come on. I know all the scenic routes here."

Naruto walked behind Akira, still being dragged by the hand. Where was she

taking him?

Akira came to an abrupt stop and turned back to check if there was anyone

around them. then motioned Naruto to follow behind her with a nod.

They walked past a few abandoned hallways. the stains on the walls told a

hundred stories, but no one had the ears to hear them. the windows were old.

possibly dating back to when the hospital was actually built. Naruto

remembered reading about this in class, so he took a surprisingly educated

guess that that was the old hospital wing that they were going through.

"How long left Akira-chan?"

"Just a bit more."

They walked a few more minutes. Past broken windows and shards of glowing

glass on the glossy tiles of the old wing. Cracked doorways and broken locks,

holes in the walls and nests of doves and cobwebs that have frozen overnight.

They walked past yellow old paintings of a child and a nurse and a family of

three. The hospital beds, some were stained with mysterious substances and

torn apart to the bones and padding. Some walls bore scars of little scribbles:

'R+I' and many other initials scribbled inside wobbly hearts etched into these

walls.

Their feet created and made moans of wood and this terriﬁed the blonde in the

beginning. As they walked more into the heart of the wing, it began

creating something more and more like music in his ears. it was as if the

building was singing to their presence, like it had missed having its only

companion over for a chat.

Naruto stopped fast enough only to have a small impact with Akira's back. The

girl turned back and smiled a rare, genuine smile at Naruto. one he was sure

he had never seen on her before.

"we have arrived at our destination." she stepped aside so Naruto could see

where their destination was all along.

The room was deranged. Its bed completely torn apart, and the padding

reduced to pieces. The walls however... they were decorated with countless

yellowed, old pieces of art. From scribbles of toddlers, to calligraphy, to a shelf

of clay work and little chewed on paciﬁers. The walls were covered from top to

bottom with those drawings, and even between the spaces they had left, there

were little scribbles of games and small paragraphs etched onto the wall, that

if someone took enough time to look more closely at them, were short stories

thought of in the spur of the moment.

"I found the walls like this when I ﬁrst found out about this place." Akira

crossed her arms and scanned the papers fondly with a certain amount

of...Naruto couldn't tell. he wasn't good at reading people's emotions, but at

that moment, it looked like the girl next to him, wasn't quite there anymore.

"How do you know this place? You've been gone for years."

Akira's lips pursed tightly and she smacked them in an attempt to distract him

from the conversation.

"Well foxy...that's another story for another time. Let's just sit here for a while

and watch the sunrise. It's been a while since I came here, so the ﬂoor is a bit

dusty."

they sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity until the sun started to

come up. First the dark sky started to lighten into a shade of light grey, then a

pallid blue, and then started the golden hour. As if having recovered from an

illness, the sky took on the redness of a healthy blush and gold reﬂected oﬀ

the leaves of twisted Hashirama trees. Until it reached the room too. The room

ﬁlled with golden light through the broken shards of window glass and

reﬂected golden strips around their pointed edges. The dust in the air was

visible and created a small wall of ephemeral glow in the room, as if reality was

a dimension away. As soon as it came though, it faded away, like it was never

there to begin with, and they decided to pretend it was in fact, not there to

begin with.

"Ready to go back?" Naruto nodded and jumped to his feet. Akira tried to

stand up, but fell back down gripping her abdomen. Naruto bent right down to

help her sit back down.

"Maybe you should sit for a bit more."

Akira shook her head. "I'm ﬁne."

"Just in case Akira-chan..."

"I can walk just ﬁne Naruto."

"But you just-"

"I said I'm ﬁne just drop it!" Akira snapped her head to look Naruto in the eyes.

He felt his mind come to a dead halt as everything just froze around him.

Her were wide open. In pain, Fear or anger, he couldn't tell, but one thing he

could tell apart in those pools of emotions was hurt. Raw and unadulterated

ﬁltered into anger just as his was into fake smiles and shouting.

So he did as she said; he knew he would want her to do the same for him.

"Okay then, let's go back if you can walk."

Akira stood up and limped for a few steps to catch up to Naruto, then

circled her arm around his and mumbled:

"Sorry."

Naruto squeezed her arm.

"Focus on walking. You have nothing to apologise for."

After being discharged temporarily for her orientation, Akira headed straight to

the academy. The foot traﬃc in Konoha had doubled that day since the civilian

academy's graduation was also on the same day.

Class wasn't any better than the village; the students were shuﬄing seats

every second and a lot of girls were pushing to occupy the place next to

Sasuke Uchiha's permanent seat. Between those girls was Sakura, who was in

a heated argument with a blond girl with a ﬂashy (and frankly gaudy) purple

scheme outﬁt. The most notable characteristic she had were her extremely

bright blue eyes and her transparent pupils. Sakura stopped

arguing immediately when she saw Akira and pushed aside her friend(?) as she

ran to her sister.

"Hey! Aren't you supposed to be at the hospital?" She hugged her tightly.

"They gave me a temporary discharge for the day. I'll have to be back by

tomorrow morning."

"That's still good! We can spend some time together after we get our teams

assigned."

"I'll...actually have to see if Naruto wants to tag along as well."

Sakura tilted her head at the mention of the boy, "Why?"

"Why not? I want to celebrate with my friend. He's not a bad person, just a

little hard to deal with when he's being loud."

"You know I don't dislike him but..." Sakura ﬁdgeted, "He's just a bit too

touchy-feely sometimes. I get that he likes me and all, but it makes me a bit

uncomfortable to be all huggy with someone. you know how I am! You're my

sister and we barely touch."

Akira thought back to a few years ago and nodded. She couldn't blame her for

hating being touched after what she went through.

Akira straightened her back, "Come on! let's go seat together. The girls will kill

anyone who sits in the esteemed empress seat next to Uchiha."

Sakura laughed, knowing she would be one of those girls if anyone dared seat

there except for herself.

"Speaking of duckbutt...when will he be here anyway?"

"Duckbutt?"

Akira spun to face Sakura, "If you look hard enough his hair looks like a-"

"Duck's butt from the back." Sakura smiled from one lobe to the other in

unprecedented glee

"You noticed it before too!" Akira screamed as she jumped up and down, and

immediately regretted it as she doubled over in pain.

"Okay okay, take it easy. This is just another episode Kira, nothing you haven't

been through before." Sakura had bent down next to her.

"Yeah...I'm ﬁne, it's just been a while."

The pinkette girl swept her hair away and tucked it behind her ears, "Let's seat

down."

"Good idea."

Naruto was smiling as he sat down. Akira was just across the room with

Sakura, who had also noticed they were trading looks. He saw Sakura whisper

something in Akira's ear, and then Akira laugh out loud with exaggerated

motions. If he remembered those lessons about lip reading, he might have

been able to ﬁgure out what they were saying, but that was one of the days

he'd skipped class.

The room fell tense in a moment when a ﬁgure slammed the sliding door and

strutted inside with an air of absolute authority to his steps.

Naruto suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at the esteemed Emochiha. His

fangirls, as usual swooned over his holier-than-thou-attitude, but he hoped

that would change as soon as they saw that he was more of an asshole than

anything.

He walked past each isle with slow steps, as if drilling the tension into

everyone's soul. He didn't spare a single glance at anyone but the ﬂoor in front

of him, and it felt like years, but it was mere seconds after his entry that he

was sat in his usual seat and surrounded by freshly recovered fangirls trying to

appear sweet to seat next to him.

Naruto noticed even the Haruno sister who had feelings for the boy was too

preoccupied with her sister to pay attention to the boy. That made him a bit

lighter and he could spend a moment without nasty thought about the Uchiha.

Iruka entered moments after Sasuke had taken his seat and started by clearing

his throat.

"everyone! I will be assigning you your teams! Please stand up so you can seat

next to your teammates when I announce your names!"

The preteens all stood up and walked to the front of the class. Naruto ended

up standing next to Shikamaru who looked even more tired and irritable than

before. Between the two however, it was Shikamaru who spoke ﬁrst:

"What are you doing here, Naruto? This isn't for dropouts. You can't be here

unless you graduate."

"Oh yeah, you see this? You see this?" Naruto pointed furiously at his brand

new headband, "See Shikamaru it's a regulation headband. We're gonna be

training together. How do you like that?"

Shikamaru scoﬀed.

"Let me put it in this way. I look great in this head gear, like it was made for

me, dattebayo!"

"Naruto! Please be quiet when I'm announcing the teams!"

Naruto muttered an apology while scratching the back of his neck. He didn't

need more shouting today of all days.

Iruka read through the groups slowly, placing most most of the clan children

together. Shikamaru had once explained to him some of the untold rules about

the team patterns: InoShikaCho, The tracker team, the balanced team, the

oﬀensive/Taijutsu team and the Genjutsu team. Hinata, KIba and Shino were a

tracker team because of how they tick oﬀ the criteria. InoShikaCho was...well,

Ino, Shikamaru and Choji, that were to specialise in delay tactics and capture

missions. The balanced team wasn't announced yet, and he wasn't paying

attention to the other announcements. Genjutsu was probably going to be

mostly composed of minor clan kids who had more precise chakra control and

were more creative than your average child. Aside from that, he was almost

convinced he was going to be in the balanced team if grades were any

indication, but he didn't know if it would be Akira or Sakura she would be

placed with. Sasuke was a constant in the team, and he had already made his

peace with the bitter reality of the team setting, but he had to see if he was

willing to work with him too.

"Team seven...Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke,"

Naruto could feel a glare burning into his proﬁle.

"Haruno Akira. please take a seat."

He was in a team with Akira then.

"Whelp. Looks like the universe wants us to stay friends foxy." Akira rested her

elbow on his shoulder.

"Don't drag me down, dead last." Sasuke took his seat on the other side and

Akira and rested his chin on his hand.

"Call him that again and I will scoop out your eyes out pretty boy." Sasuke's

attention was on Akira after that. He narrowed his eyes at the small monitor

attached to her wrist and his frown went away slightly as a satirical glint

appeared in his eyes.

"Doubt it. You're too sick to even take me on solo."

Naruto could feel Akira clench her ﬁst and tense in a battle ready position.

Sasuke tensed himself with his hand moving slightly towards his weapons'

pouch. Naruto took her clenched ﬁst in his hand and unﬁsted it.

"He's not worth it 'Kira" he whispered.

"He'd better hope to Kami. Or he'd be pummled before he could say 'ouch'."

WIth one last dirty look sent the boy's way, Akira drew her face away from the

Uchiha, directing her focus on the newly announced team.

"...And Haruno Sakura." They had missed her other teammates' names, but

they were two boys. One was taller and took up more space, and the other

one had a frail ﬁgure and was much shorter than Sakura and the other boy.

"Please wait here until your instructors arrive."

Kakashi watched his new team through an orb, in a room alone with the

Sandaime. He could almost see the young kunoichi's killer intent manifest a

shape as both her and the Uchiha sat in battle-ready positions. That was until

the blond grabbed the kunoichi's hand and talked her out of the showdown.

"Never expected Naruto to be the mediator between these two. If anything I

thought Akira to be the one to hold Naruto and Sasuke back from ﬁghting."

Hiruzen took in a mouthful of smoke.

"So I've read. Those reports are going to be useful; I don't trust Uchiha would

be too open with me."

"He's been raising many red ﬂags in his psyche tests. Inoichi personally

conducted one and expressed little hope in his recovery."

"So I've read..." Kakashi's eyes wander oﬀ to the pink-haired kunoichi on the

other side of the bench.

"What more can you tell me about her?"

Hiruzen paused to gather his words "Haruno Akira. Sister to the kunoichi of

the year and Aurora of the Yonnin's apprentice of 4 years. Her health has been

deteriorating since birth and unless a cure is found, there is not much hope for

a full recovery. her skills are spread vast and she has great aptitude for

genjutsu and analytical and scientiﬁc jobs. she has an aptitude for picking up

skills faster than other is due to her transferable skills, but I remember her

giving up many things from losing interest or them being too unchallenging for

her. non-judgemental and ﬂexible with her beliefs, and almost loyal to a fault."

He nodded towards Naruto in the orb.

"Do you know what is causing her poor health?"

"Not to my knowledge. She is still regarded as one of the mysteries of the

medical world. a year before she left, she was marked as incurable and that

ended the international ﬂock of medics- civilian and ninja- coming over to

study her."

"Well, for someone who's been gone for so long, she seems pretty close to

Naruto. Does she know...?"

Hiruzen locked onto the girl displayed on the orb "There's a possibility she is

already entertaining the idea. We will only give ourselves away if we take her in

now."

"And with Aurora backing her, you wouldn't want a PR disaster for Konoha. Or

an international one, knowing her mentor."

"Frankly, we planned on giving her position to her sister-Sakura- at ﬁrst. But

then Aurora sent a letter asking for her to graduate from Konoha and- I

thought it was a good opportunity for some more involvement with Kusa. Kami

knows Aurora didn't contact me for 4 years after that disaster we had."

"I still remember sending out my team for the investigation following. The law

ﬁrms in the capital were swarmed with work when I visited for a random

check."

"I speciﬁcally handpicked you for this job Kakashi. You can both turn Sasuke's

Sharingan into an asset for him, and work with Minato's son. Akira can be a

good challenge for you, she's got the criteria for a good leader, so maybe

you'll get to teach her how to utilise her mindset to her best ability."

"That, I will Hokage-sama. i only worry about Sasuke. he sounds like he needs

intensive rehab before being slotted into active duty."

"I have already arranged for that." Hiruzen ﬂips through the reports to the last

page.

"This is a therapy insurance for your team. Not only Sasuke, but Naruto and

Akira can make use of this as long as it is valid, and as long as you

accompany them as a mature guardian." Kakashi claimed the paper with both

hands as he scanned through the terms and conditions.

"Good luck Kakashi."

"Thank you Hokage-sama. I believe I'm going to need it."

An hour went by and each team's instructors had arrived and taken them out.

Only team 7 remained in an empty class with only a chalk board and empty

rows of uncomfortable benches to keep them company. The hour was getting

close to lunch and hunger pangs were demanding them to eat something.

That wouldn't happen anytime soon though.

The door to the class slid open as a ﬁgure walked sluggishly inside. The man

that walked in walked with an exaggerated slouch that made him look much

shorter than he was. his hair was styled in an extreme spike that looked like an

iceberg and a mask covered half of his face. Besides the mask that was hung

over his eye, the only part of his face that was left in clear view was his single

eye, which didn't leave much space to read his emotions.

A perfectly covered shinobi. Akira was mildly threatened by how even she was

outright underestimating the man knowing he was possibly, one of the most

feared shinobi between the nations.

Hatake Kakashi, The copycat ninja.

"My ﬁrst impression of you guys...?" He began and Akira almost shifted at the

husky voice that came out of his mouth.

Goddamn stupid HORMONAL brain.

"I don't like you. Meet me up on the rooftop in 3 minutes. No shunshin." At

that, the jounin shunshined away, leaving only smoke and a ticking alarm clock

where he stood.

"3 minutes?! That's impossible dattebayo! the stairs are on the other side of

the campus!"

"Then we better get going then, eh Naruto?! Duckbutt?!" Sasuke had half the

decency to look more rushed than oﬀended before they all sped oﬀ to the

staircase across campus."

"You're late!" Kakashi stopped a stopwatch showing a second past 3 minutes.

"Like you're one to talk! You kept us waiting for a whole hour!" Naruto

squatted and pointed his ﬁnger at Kakashi accusingly

"Beat it blond bag. A second can save your life on the battlerﬁeld. So when I

say 3 minutes, I mean 3 minutes sharp."

Naruto had the decency to look down and mutter an apology.

"Sit down brats." He motioned towards a stone seatee a few steps away.

the three preteens sat down with begrudging obedience and tried to muﬄe the

strings of nice curse words they wanted to shout mutter. the Jounin lounged

on the edge of the rooftop and smiled the feared plain smile most ninja gave

the enemies they were about to behead.

"So...tell me about yourselves. starting from blondie." he nodded towards

Naruto who looked as if someone had just told him an extremely oﬀensive 'yo

mama' joke.

"Hey! I have a name and you better remember it 'cause some day i'll be

Hokage and you'll be answering to me!"

"Fabulous!" Kakashi widened his smile "then maybe you'd want to tell me

where i should store all these heads I brought back from my last mission, eh?"

Naruto piped down in cold sweat, wishing he was a little more oblivious so he

could ignore the murderous aura directed towards him, and the threat of losing

his head.

"Now that's settled, let's move on. Pinky."

Akira gave him a frozen grin.

"What? Not gonna talk pinky?"

"uh, yeah sorry. I was just experiencing second hand embarrassment. So

yeah. I'm Akira, I'm 12 and I'm still short, so that's fun! Aside from that I

believe you've scanned my ﬁles from Kusa enough to know me better than my

only friend here. Hatake-san."

"So you've done your own research too brat. Congrats you're smart. Next!"

"Unintentionally Hatake-san. My mentor talks-"

"Next!" Kakashi shoved his palm in Akira's view and turned to Sasuke.

"If what she said about you reading our ﬁles is true then I don't see what the

point of wasting my breath on talking about things you already know."

"Well I'm asking you to give me an oral report on a mission you've got a

written report for. How do you respond?"

Sasuke paused and grit his teeth, but then started:

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha. I don't have any particular likes or dislikes, but I

have a goal I will achieve at any cost. To revive my clan and kill a certain

person."

Anyone worth half their mind could easily tell who that 'person' was. kakashi,

having read the reports on his psyche evaluations, only saw what they meant

now.

Hostile, non-responsive to authority, grandiose, developing narcissistic

personality, signs of post traumatic stress and anger managment issues.

"That all?" Kakashi looks at all three preteens before sighing and getting down

from the edge.

"Are we going to start learning cool jutsu now?!" Naruto, in his excitement

jumped oﬀ his seat and bounced up and down.

"Not yet!"

"You!" Kakashi pointed at Naruto, "You disclosed absolutely nothing worthy or

related to the report you were asked of!" he then turned to Akira.

"You! Assumed I already knew everything, giving me a completely unrelated

and lacking report!" And lastly, he turned to Sasuke.

"You! Are a menace to a ﬁgure of authority with how much you oppose them

and have no prospects of basic respect for the higher-ups!"

He crossed his arms and scanned the group of three, if he could even call

them that. A disaster waiting to happen would be a better name for them.

"You all failed this segment of the test, and thus will be granted no marks for

this portion."

"Wait! Didn't we all pass the test at the academy?!" Naruto screamed at the

top of his lungs and the two other preteens shielded their ears.

"You think a written exam and basic jutsu tests are enough to graduate?"

Kakashi walked towards the edge of the roof and pointed at a rectangular

building in the distance.

"See that place? That's the Genin Corps; where academy drop outs, failed

students and civilians wanting to get ninja training go to. Only 12 of you guys

will successfully graduate, out of 150 graduates of the ﬁve classes, and make

up the powerhouse teams of the new generation for the main defence lines."

"you're not serious...are you? I could just graduate from Kusa and get a

promotion to Chunin on the ﬁeld!"

"And Kusagakure isn't a main hidden village, now is it?"

"No but-"

"Konoha is constantly under surveillance by its other competitors. Not only do

we have to take on outside forces, we also have to ensure that our ranks are

safe from within. I thought you were supposed to learn these stuﬀ in the

academy, or are you just too thick to understand it?"

"I- I'm sorry."

Kakashi looked down on the three, addressing them as a whole, "i don't need

your apologies. I need you to get your shit together and use your brains.

they're not there to look pretty." He stood up and jumped oﬀ the ledge, "You

still have another shot at passing my test to be trained as a team." Their eyes

lit up at the mention of another opportunity.

"Meet me tomorrow at training ground 3. Do not eat breakfast or you will

throw up. I'll see you tomorrow at 6 o'clock any equipment you

might use." With that, Kakashi disappeared in a puﬀ of smoke, leaving three

new genin planning their inventory from a full out ﬁght to a death match.


	4. 4 Just our future careers, no worries!

The alarm clock rang exactly for a minute when Akira ﬁnally decided to wake

up.

Her sister was out with her team until late at night and was soundly sleeping in

her bedroom. So was her mom, tired from the outing she had with her friends.

The only person she knew to be awake at this hour, was her father. Who was

probably watching the sun rise from their rooftop.

So she went up.

She knew she would ﬁnd him as she always did: drinking his favourite blend of

tea and looking at absolutely nothing.

And true to his habit, he was doing exactly that.

"Someone is tense to their chakra." Kizashi faced his daughter and made

space for her to sit down next to him.

"I didn't sleep too well."Akira slumped down on the cushion and huddled close

to Kizashi, the zesty aroma of orange engulfed her senses, making her eyelids

heavier.

"Nightmares back?" He combed her hair out of her face.

"No, it's just...I'm too nervous for my test today. Hatake-san was pretty harsh

on us yesterday and I actually see his point dad."

"How so?"Akira huddled into herself even more.

"I...we failed yesterday's test-don't tell mom- and he failed us for the right

reasons: Sasuke has no respect for authority, Naruto can't focus on a single

thing and I'm a know-it-all."

"You're not a know-it-all!" Cried Kizashi "You've worshiped the guy since that

day he took you to the hospital, you probably assumed he remembered

something about you, eh?"

Akira sighed into her knees "I mean...I was hoping, but...but he doesn't seem

to remember any of it."

"You could talk to him about it maybe."

"He'll just think I'm trying to win his favour."

"You can try. He either fails you or he doesn't. Either way, telling him might be

the only way to approach the subject."

"Can we not talk about this anymore? Please?" Akira huﬀed, annoyance

apparent in her words.

"Sure sweetie. Do you want some tea?"

"Could you actually help me with my packing and all? I think I'm gonna forget

something with these stupid nerves."

Kizashi lifted his teapot and cup "Sure. Let's get cracking."

He snickered to himself as his three genin arrived at 6 o'clock sharp.

good kids.

He hoped they had fallen for the food trick too. He never got tired of seeing

the misery on his genin's faces when their stomachs constantly gave them

away.

three more hours and he was going to show up. Just three more hours of

delay tactics.

the time was 9 am when Kakashi saw ﬁt to show up in front of three genin.

One of them who completely lost it and emptied his lungs of all breathable air

to scream at him:

"You're late!"

"I never said I would be here at 6. Just you three."

"Still!"

"Sit." And like a good-natured puppy, Naruto sat down immediately, fearing

the Jounin would disappear for three more hours.

Kakashi made eye contact with the rest of the team, who nodded.

"I have an alarm clock here that I've set to ring in exactly 3 hours. Your

objective today?" Kakashi paused dramatically and took out two jingling bells

from his back pocket "To steal a bell from me. Whoever gets a bell, will get a

guaranteed pass to Genin." He saw the looks on the genins' faces morph from

determination, to confusion, and in a spare second, to realisation."

"So one of us is bound to fail." Sasuke crossed his arms and glared at the bell

as if greeting an old enemy.

"Precisely. I only have so much attention I can spare, and I'm deﬁnitely not

giving out weak shinobi, or kunoichi." Akira straightened at his statement.

good. It's working.

He hoped they would fail. With all his might and from the bottom of his heart.

Kids were never his thing and he hoped to reinstate himself as ANBU one of

his days.

Kakashi smiled as his eyes morphed into those of steel "If there are no more

questions, let us begin the test without any further ado. The use of any

equipment is allowed. Nin, Gen and Taijutsu are all allowed. Come at me with

the intent to kill. We will start at my announcement."

He met each of the genin's eyes who got into battle-ready positions and

readied a weapon of their choice. All slightly raised their weapons' pouches

and pulled their shoulders back to run at full speed.

"Start!"

The genin all scattered. At least they knew the basics, Kakashi was thankful for

that much. He scouted the area and searched for their chakra signatures until

he came across Naruto's intense chakra. It multiplied to ten then twenty then a

hundred.

Shadow clones

They all ran in a chaotic war cry towards Kakashi.

And he dispelled each one, one after the other.

"Dammit! Why can't I hit you?!"

"That, kiddo," Kakashi dodged a roundhouse kick sent at him by a clone

Too much weight in punched and very little control

"is 'cause you're outmatched!" Naruto saw Kakashi disappear in a cloud of

smoke, and ﬂash in front of his eyes, delivering a single punch that sent him

airborne. he twisted in the air and rolled on the ground, landing on all fours.

Before he could react, Kakashi appeared behind him, and in a single,

stretched out second, paired his ﬁngers in the sign of the tiger:

"Hidden secret jutsu:"

"Shit" Naruto could only register so much as Kakashi shouted out:

"One thousand years of pain!"

Naruto expected a spark to burn oﬀ his eyebrows, or a ﬁreball to leave deep

burns all over his body. Instead he felt something diﬀerent:

'Why is something poking at my butt?" He had time to register so much as he

was sent ﬂying oﬀ towards a lake nearby, and it was only when he landed

inside the water, that instead of prioritising breathing, his traitorous brain

chose to debate whether he was just felt by a pervert or not.

While Naruto was drowning where Kakashi had shot him oﬀ to, he began to

look for the missing ninja in the group.

Akira...Sasuke...come out come out wherever you are.

He thought maybe sending the message telepathically would help him ﬁnd

them, seeing just how it was the rage with the joint passing hippies in town.

Aura and all that shabam.

Maybe the Gods heard his prayer, or maybe those hippies were just prophetic

instead of other worldly high, but he ﬁnally could manage to separate some bit

of whispering from the trees on that side with Sasuke's lowered voice leading

the conversation:

"What do you want?"

"Work with me Ducky. I know this guy's style inside out."

"You're just going to slow me down. I work solo."

arrogant idiot.

He was so going to pummel that ego of his to the ground today.

Also, what did Akira mean by 'inside out'? Was she skilled enough to stalk him

without his knowing or did she get info on him through Aurora?

Meh. He would ﬁnd out soon anyway. The Genin in this village have never

been the strongest. He could defeat these three with two hands tied behind

his back.

Kami knows the other ones still weren't capable of stealing those bells when

he had actually tied them back.

For now, he would just try to lure them out.

Kakashi threw two kunai at the tree and they whizzed past his ear, masking

but not quite covering the comedic shouts of the two Genin:

"Duck!"

"Don't call me th-"

The rustling leaves told him Akira actually forced the Uchiha's head down.

Seconds later, they both came down, battle ready and shuriken in hand, ready

to throw.

he also liked that bit of killer intent seeping out of them.

Sasuke glanced at Akira, and without wasting time, disappeared in a cloud of

smoke, leaving the pink-haired girl to deal with the Jounin alone. Not slightly

discouraged, Akira recovered swiftly from the abandonment and deﬂected the

kunai Kakashi sent her way while she was distracted, with her own. She

didn't see the other kunai following the same trajectory, and was paralysed by

the sudden whizzing of the kunai that moved past her ear.

Kakashi used her moment of paralysis and substituted with the moving kunai.

Kunai met kunai and sparks ﬂew oﬀ the small blades. Akira trembled under

from the force of Kakashi's single-handed strength.

"Don't take your eyes oﬀ the enemy kid."

"Sorry! I'm too young to romance you!" Gritted Akira. She stopped putting

strength into blocking Kakashi and in the blink of an eye, dodged under his

kunai, substituting with the one she had deﬂected before, two metres away.

Kakashi let out an amused laugh "aren't you witty."

"I learned from the best."

"And who might that be?"

Akira shrugged, "I think anyone worth half their brain would know that much if

they looked through my ﬁles. Oh wait. You have."

"Careful kid. I don't always take sass well."

Akira clasped her hand behind her head and popped her tongue saying "dully

noted."

Kakashi could make out a faint trace of green under her bangs as her hands

returned to her sides.

"Let's make this party a bit more interesting, shall we?"

Akira propped her hands in the basic seal for Shunshin and smoke engulfed

her as she appeared close to him. She gave a chakra enhanced kick to the

ground and went airborne, and proceeded to make hand signs for a jutsu

Kakashi had seen many times before.

Tiger, Snake, dragon

"Sōton: Tsurukoushu no Jutsu!"(grass release: vine strangle jutsu)

arms of vine sprouted from the ground where she was hovering over, and two

arms made footing for her. She stood higher than Kakashi, looking down on

him and readying her feet.

Akira moved ﬁrst, removing one of her feet from one of the arms, and kicking

out in a motion the vine seemed to imitate. The arm hit the ground heavily,

making dents and cracks at the surface. Kakashi had dodged that hit by a

hair. Another kick, this time a roundhouse the vine extended over to cover

more ground for. despite its size, it moved exceptionally fast. Kakashi went

airborne, and used the momentum to latch himself onto the moving arm and

climb towards Akira, throwing multiple Shuriken at her, one of which

embedded itself near her clavicle. He was pretty sure it was missing her

subclavian artery by a milli.

Another arm shot up and wrapped around Kakashi, squeezing him in imitation

of the force Akira was exerting . it was deﬁnitely a powerful jutsu, but not

powerful enough that he couldn't get out if he tried.

directing chakra towards his arms, Kakashi opened the grip and slid onto the

ground.

"Good jutsu. I didn't expect you to know any."

"Makes you want to give me a pass, doesn't it?" Kakashi chuckled.

"Big talk. Get a bell and I just might."

Akira huﬀed, "Worth a try."

Without delay, she made the sign for a Shunshin and disappeared, leaving

kakashi to try and ﬁnd the three of them again.

(honestly he wasn't even trying to beat them at that point, it would be unfair to

them if he did.)

He searched for a while, the footprints, bent grass, remaining scent. The brats

were good at covering their tracks, but he could still tail them no problem.

at least they're not weak.

Even if they passed the test and he was stuck with them for a while, he was

relieved he wouldn't be training with morons.

A sudden explosion went oﬀ in the distance and he jumped on top of a tree

branch to get a better view. About a kilometre away, he could see Sasuke and

Naruto ﬁghting each other, and Sasuke was spouting a ﬁreball headed directly

for a horde of Naruto's clones.

Idiots thinking they can take him on solo.

He sped oﬀ to the ﬁght, putting chakra into his feet to speed up.

When the test ﬁrst began:

The genin scattered, Naruto hiding in a tree on the other side and Sasuke and

Akira crouching under the branches of the same tree.

Akira inched closer to Sasuke and put her ﬁnger to her lips, tapping on his

shoulder in code:

"not a word. He has good hearing."

"What do you want?" Sasuke tapped back.

"I don't want the bell. I just want to beat him. Work with me."

"You'll slow me down."

"I know this guy's style best. I've studied him for years. promise you'll get a

pass." Akira glared, pleaded a little almost, and ﬁnally Sasuke frowned and

tapped again.

"What's your plan?"

"talk out loud and reject me. I'll tell you the rest later."

Sasuke nodded as Akira made a pair of clones and one transformed into a

carbon copy of Sasuke. The boy could make out a faint green below her

bangs before she grabbed his shoulder and with a smooth feeling of

being whizzed through the sky, then absolute deafening silence, then voice

again arrived in a completely diﬀerent part of training ground 3. promptly, Akira

took out two parchments with strange markings and symbols on them and

stuck them to hers and Sasuke's chest under their shirts and began:

"His name is Hatake Kakashi. A former ANBU captain known as the copy cat

ninja. Underneath his headband is a Sharingan he gained during the third war.

Sasuke's eyes ﬂashed with confusion and disbelief.

"Just...trust me on this. He does."

"We'll talk about this"

"Later. For now we need Naruto's clones."

"That idiot will only slow us."

"And unlike us two, he is a chakra monster. He can make a thousand or so

without tiring."

"So we'll fail without loser?" Akira stopped herself from throwing the body a

dirty look at the name calling. Instead she nodded and said:

"I brought some printed paper with me. We need to somehow stick these to

Kakashi's feet so we can see where he goes and maybe track him. He

probably isn't even trying to beat us, if he tried to come up with a battle

strategy we'd all be dead by now, so he'll try to avoid using chakra to enhance

his speed. It's going to buy us more time before he ﬁnds us, so we can change

tactics quickly after we stick those printed papers on his foot. we can have

Naruto make a bunch of clones who hide these in between themselves and

pass it on to ones being trampled by him."

"Next in line is pretence. We need to keep up the facade that we're ﬁghting

between ourselves. Kakashi is sure to be attracted to our little ﬁght. I trust he's

about to hear our little conversation our clones are about to carry out, so we

probably need to switch out with them some time soon or he will suspect

we're working together. I will teleport to our previous location on my

clone's signal. I want you to locate Naruto and give him this." Akira took oﬀ the

hospital monitor band that was hidden under her shirt sleeve.

"You escaped from hospital?"

"They've probably just found out. I'll go back after this test."

Sasuke gave her an unreadable look, as if appraising her for injuries or any

sign of ill health but then gave up after he remembered what was at stake."

"Where do we meet afterwards?

" we don't. you'll know when I talk to you."

"So you just expect me to follow along?"

"Exactly." Sasuke glared at her.

"I swear Haruno, if this plan of yours doesn't work-"

"Yada yada. We get it Uchiha, you're a lone wolf. Just follow my lead and we'll

be ﬁne, unless you mess something , make sure your stomach doesn't

give you away." She tossed a ration bar at him.

Catching the bar, Sasuke Asked, "Are you sure he's going to let us beat him?"

Akira smiled conﬁdently, "He's an asshole, but he's not a sore loser."

On the other hand, he was glad that the genin of this village were competent

this year, on the other...

If they could just come out already. He would feel bad if he used his full

abilities on these poor bastards, so he was stuck trying to track them down

the ineﬃcient way.

since when did he start to feel pity anyway?

Oh right he didn't, and This is taking way too long.

He extended his chakra along the ground; tendrils of blue running in his

mindscape and lighting up the surroundings in a ghostly blue. he saw two

boys ﬁghting out on the ﬁeld; one spamming clones by the masses and one

blowing out blazing ﬁre chakra from his lungs.

They're truly frightening in their own right. One, a chakra monster, the other an

emotionally volatile pyromaniac. The third one calculative and curious. Like a

new-born kitten being brought back by satisfaction and pure chance from

every dangerous situation she faces. He could remember reading her proﬁle:

mission rank: B

number of kills: 1

casualty proﬁle: N/A

name: N/A

allegiance: N/A

rank: N/A

reason for being killed: N/A

report: N/A

The mystery person bugged him. Haruno's ﬁrst and only mission as an

academy student was to get the credentials she missed out on during her ﬁrst

2-3 years of academy in Kusagakure. The mission rank was raised when an

unknown enemy disrupted the ﬂow of the schedule.

He might investigate more later. If Haruno passed, he would make it his

mission to do so. For now, he would have to deal with the brats that had

appeared in front of him.

They glare at him, then at each other and run at him with chakra-enhanced

speed.

Naruto kicked oﬀ the ground and sent him a roundhouse kick, while Sasuke

mounted some Shuriken on some ninja wire and sent them his way. He

dodged Naruto's kick and spun a kunai in his ﬁnger, breaking the wire the

Shuriken were mounted on and deﬂecting the moving ones headed his way.

Sasuke zoomed in swiftly, ditching the wire, and Naruto dived for the bells

thinking Kakashi's attention was with Sasuke, but he hurled Naruto onto the

other boy and sent them rolling a few metres away. They dodged the barrage

of kunai that was sent for them and pushed eachother away, faces looking like

they'd just smelled a dozen decomposing corpses.

"Is that all you got?" Kakashi took it on himself to provoke them further.

Sasuke's face looked just like Itachi's: constipated and expecting early

wrinkles, while Naruto looked like he was about to throw a feral ﬁt.

That was decidedly when things went south.

The boys looked at eachother, disgustedly, but with more hatred for the

Jounin than for each other at the moment. Bonding over their pans of demise

for the Jounin, they nodded at eachother. Naruto cracked his knuckles, while

Sasuke unabashedly revealed a manic smile and gathered hot chakra in his

expanding lungs.

Several alarms went oﬀ in Kakashi's head in the matter of seconds.

Naruto made a hundred clones that surrounded him and Sasuke and rallied

them in a war cry. The clones zoomed towards Kakashi and tried to hit him

with diﬀerent moves each time. Some he punched into the afterlife, and some

he accidentally kicked to death. Sasuke kicked himself oﬀ the ground in the

end, and did the hand signs for the signature Uchiha jutsu:

Grand ﬁreball

A ﬂaming ball the size of a small house blew out of his mouth, and moved

towards Kakashi with the promise of third degree burns and and an eyebrow-

less future. Kakashi Shunshined only the last second between guarding the

bells and deﬂecting Naruto's clones and appeared two metres away, standing

next to a patch of burnt grass and a massive hole looking as if someone had

been illegally chipping away at the training ground.

That's gonna cost his arm and two of his legs.

And that was when he felt it. Two pieces of paper underneath his ninja

sandals.

fuck

Naruto had stuck printed paper to his sandals.

"I didn't see this coming."

he readied himself to go all out. If he was willing to hold back on these kids in

the least? ho boy that chance was gone forever. That was before they started

working together and planning and... coming close to defeating a former

ANBU captain.

"You...just signed your death warrant."He ﬂashed one of his bullshit eye

smiles.

"what?"

A wave of killer intent pinned the two Genin in their places, holding their

throats and trying not to scratch raw their skin. It burnedburnedburned why

couldn't he just let them go?! Maybe if they didn't have eyes they wouldn't

hurt so much they wanted to scratch them out-

They weren't give a chance to react. Even if they knew where the hits

were coming from they couldn't react to it. Kakashi had made it his mission

not to lose to a bunch of new grad genin and he was going to go through with

it. Sasuke rolled missed Kakashi's kick by a millimetre and it swished past his

face, and Naruto's feet scratched on the ground, trying to maintain his balance

and see through watering eyes as he tried to feel his jaw again from a

ﬁrm uppercut(which he was sure was at least going to bruise). Sasuke ran to

Naruto and tackled him out of another uppercut meant to knock him out and it

sent his head and his body following, ﬂying away. He landed a metre away and

kicked himself back another few metres. Kakashi ran through the hand signs

for an earth jutsu while Sasuke readied a ﬁreball to counter.

The man in front of them wasn't the lazy, disorganised mess they had met

yesterday. He was a frightening beast who would kill you if you stumbled into

his territory. and they had ran into it headﬁrst. The only thing that gave Sasuke

even a sliver of hope, was that Akira's chakra was nearby and it was

approaching them at top speed.

Sasuke could see the light start to dim. The clouds got darker and more

menacing and the wind started to pick up. Eﬀects of Kakashi's genjutsu no

doubt, but it would mean using a large amount of chakra for kai since it's

aided by the sharingan. More details, more chakra to get out of it.

It was when Kakashi decided to release his earth jutsu that Akira appeared

behind them and with a had on each boy's shoulder, teleported each person

to the other side of the training ground.

She had miscalculated.

severely.

Haruno Akira wanted to believe that her role model, whose name she had

stuck on her bedroom wall, wasn't a sore fucking loser.

But he was. the way he released a B-rank jutsu on two kids who had just stuck

chakra prints on his feet showed that he'd rather die in the most painful way

than let them pass the test.

"You said he wouldn't try to kill us!" Sasuke grabbed Akira by the collar with

rage that ﬂashed and burned into her eyes. Naruto stumbled oﬀ to a log, not

stopping to protest.

"I had no idea this would happen!"

"That he turns out to be sore loser who would never pass us in the ﬁrst

place?" Sasuke let go of her collar, "Yeah. I deﬁnitely spent years of my life

trying to be a shinobi to fail because of your miscalculation." he spat.

That might have been the most she'd ever heard Sasuke speak at once. that

goes to saying that he was furious and probably bummed that he isn't going to

be able to beat a Jounin going full out on them with 22 years of experience on

them.

"I'm sorry!"

"I neither want nor need your apology. Get me a bell and we're even."

They both started at each other, one furious and bitter, the other overridden

with guilt and shame but also eyes ﬂashing with the same glint they take on

every time she hunted.

She was out for blood, and she was going for the kill.

Naruto watched their exchange from the safety of a tree log, not wanting to

talk to Akira for the time. It was then he saw, but almost missed the small glint

of ninja wire had he looked away a bit earlier or to the wrong angle.

Maybe then everything would have been diﬀerent, that Akira would have gone

back home and died on a simple mission. Maybe Sasuke and Naruto were

placed on another team with another girl, and they all turned out pretty okay in

the end. Maybe Sasuke's bitterness ﬁnally led him oﬀ the path of sanity and he

delved into a long-lasting, vengeful darkness.

Maybe, in a world that Akira never existed in, the test, Kakashi, Sakura and

everyone else was diﬀerent. Maybe in another life.

but not in this one.

A ripple causes a tsunami, a butterﬂy ﬂapping its wings a tornado.

The change was already made and by which sick joke the gods were playing,

this change would change the future of each and every person even if to only

laugh in the face of the fate, that once gave them bitter endings, undeserved

redemptions and unfulﬁlled potentials.

This life would be diﬀerent.

the glint caught Naruto's eyes and he immediately followed it.

There it was. fresh and perfectly intact.

"Teme! 'Kira! Look over here!"

The preteens ran over to Naruto with quizzical expressions, that was until they

saw what he was exactly pointing at.

a trap trigger.

"Is anyone good with traps?" Akira looked at Naruto ad Sasuke, until the blond

gave a laugh and said:

"I haven't made a proper battleﬁeld one before, but I've done chakra

activated connected prank bombs. If this works the same way I can ﬁnd the

other bombs that are connected!"

"Naruto."

"Yep?"

Akira placed her hands on his shoulders, "Get to work or I'll give you a big

happy watery smooch."

"That's disgusting 'ttebayo!"

The time was then. All plans had failed and it was time to reveal all hands.

Only luck remained the determinant now.

"Sasuke, are you in position?"

Ready

"Naruto?"

right here

And they moved. The genjutsu cost too much chakra to dispel, so they kept it.

They fought guerrilla tactics until then, now was the time to go all out.

Give it their all, because it was either all of them ﬁghting or all of them going

down together. This had to be a group eﬀort, or a complete loss. Their

desperation the glue of this new feeling they shared together, they got to work

with renewed vigour fuelled by a last-ditch attempt for a new life.

Akira had made a mental connection between them, a faint green muﬄed by

her bangs where she stood.

Don't mess this up dobe

Same to you teme.

"Geez we get it. You love each other."

shut up

gross!

Amused by their reactions, Akira almost chuckled, but forced herself to stay

quiet.

"You remember what to do, right foxy?"

Hit and run.

"And you ducky?"

Hn

"I'll take that as a yes. And then?"

We come back to you after each hit and you teleport us on top of him.

"Stick restriction seal and grab the bells. Boom we pass."

Dattebayo!

Akira was almost glad the voices couldn't change their volume in her head, or

she would already have a headache from how much screaming Naruto did.

A buzzing chakra signature came in Akira's range that second, silent rage in

every electrical buzz that stung at her senses and made her itch under her skin

and in her organs.

"He's here! Attack in 5...4...3...2...1...NOW ."

A kunai whizzed past the trees and kakashi caught it by its handle and

twisted in in his ﬁnger. The kunai disappeared in a cloud of smoke and

was replaced with a clone that aimed a roundhouse kick at his jaw, but

was dispelled before his leg reached the jounin. The same kunai was thrown

again, from a diﬀerent trajectory, farther away from the jounin and Naruto

himself substituted and promptly made a dozen more clones.

"Come at me!"

"You don't learn, do you kid?"

Kakashi sighed and walked towards him at a slow pace. His disposition shifted

instantly and the silent fury was no more.

He was out for blood.

He sliced through clones like butter through knife, and he probably would have

them for a meal, if not for the morals that would be questioned and the

physics laws broken. He sliced his way towards the real Naruto in seconds,

but when he landed a hit on the boy, he vanished like every other clone. He felt

the heat of a ﬁre jutsu behind him, and sure enough, Sasuke was there,

blowing more chakra into his grand ﬁreball with each passing second.

He reﬂexively backed away from the ﬁreball, narrowly dodging being burned to

a crisp. Thinking he's avoided the attack, he readied for yet another round of

attacks, but the only thing he hears is the click of a button inside the stretching

tree behind him.

He sees Akira smirking and the sound of a great explosion. Fingers move to

positions recorded over years of mundane practice, and after that, all he

saw was three genin with the back ground of ﬂattened Hashirama trees.

The genin wasted no time in pouncing on Kakashi, Naruto and Sasuke

attacking him from the ground with a restraining seals they immediately

stuck to the bare skin of his hands he used to cover himself with. Naruto and

Sasuke grabbed the bells and landed a few metres away.

"The place has been ﬂattened with disarmed bombs. You have leave chakra

prints wherever you go and you can't use chakra eﬃciently. We have you

immobilised." Sasuke says as a matter of factly, almost boasting to the face of

the same man who dared even fail him.

"We won 'ttebayo!"

"We won sensei. It's over." Naruto grinned and pointed to the bells, to which

Kakashi only chuckled at.

"Really now?" His eyes wandered over to a limp ﬁgure just coated by the

smoke.

"What did you do to her?!" Naruto ran over to the body of his pink-haired

teammate and lifted her head.

unconscious.

"Oh...you know. Just a little trick."

Naruto who had been relatively calm, turned at him from Akira, eyes feral and

fangs bared in fury.

"Let her go!"

"It's not up to me Naruto." Kakashi sighed

"Then who can release the jutsu?" Sasuke glared at Kakashi.

The Jounin gave his usual bullshit eye smile, "I don't think you're in a position

to ask questions."

The clone of Kakashi puﬀed away and so did the bells. The alarm sent its

shockwave of noise all over the training ground and next thing they knew,

someone had Shunshined in front of them. The same man who had

disappeared moments ago, walked out of the smoke, smiling victoriously,

holding a pair of bells in their faces.

"You fail."

The last thing Naruto remembered before he was knocked out by the real

Kakashi, was seeing Sasuke black out and fall on the ground.

She woke up in a deserted graveyard. She wasn't sure she could even call it

that. Most graveyards she'd been to had more than one grave.

The wind howled with deafening frequency and droplets of rain mixed with

smog infused the air with the choking smell of smoke and the breezy

fragrance of wet soil. She wasn't sure if it was day time or night; the sky was

dark one way or the other. It wouldn't matter much if it was either, but

something told her it hadn't been either in a long time. Like the could feel

change catching dust with the time staying constant wherever this was.

"Welcome." Akira jumped back, and whipped her head towards the sound.

"Thought I'd surprise you. After all..."

The young girl spoke clearly, not hesitating or stuttering in her speech. It was

as if she was being addressed by a goddess, but not of joy or fertility or

prosperity. She was the epitome of darkness. The overlord who brought

destruction unless thousands were sacriﬁced to her. She was the apocalypse,

the harbinger of war, plagues and death. Of everyone, she would know.

after all the girl standing in front of her, was no one but herself. Only older.

towering over her and peering into her eyes as if she could read everything oﬀ

the sole movement of her pupils.

"What do you want?"

"Hello, how are you, I missed you, I'm doing great how about you?"

"Cut the bullshit. We both know you're not here for pleasantries."

"Rude, but true. Scared?"

"You wish."

She chuckled, "Whatever you say sweetie." she inched closer to her

"Don't call me that."

She stared at her, still inching towards her slowly, "Okay honey."

Akira gulped, "what do you want?"

She stopped, inches from her face, peering into her eyes every few moments

and stealing glances of her face, as if recording everything she'd missed in the

years Akira hadn't been there

"What do I want? You were the one who came here. That cute sensei of yours

knocked you out."

Akira muttered something in the lines of cutting Kakashi's hair when he's

sleeping but focused on the girl in front of her again

"Go way."

The older Akira grabbed her by the chin and squeezed gently, "And if I don't?

What're you gonna do?" she let go of her chin and took a step past her, "Kill

me?" She raised her brow at the younger girl.

Akira turned to her older doppelganger walking away from her, and towards

the sole grave in the back. She ran her ﬁngers over the smooth, polished stone

and leaned on the top.

"Have you ever checked whose grave this is?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Answer me ﬁrst."

"I...ugh. No. I never thought to."

The older girl motioned for Akira to go over to her, ﬁngers dragging her in

tantalisingly. urging her to take a look. .Look. She would still be alive

if she checked who was buried in her mind.

she took a step towards the grave.

and another.

And another.

Until she blinked. And it was there. erect in front of her, almost looking down

on her, even though it stood at her hips. Almost taunting her for never noticing

the only important object in her whole mindscape in years.

The older girl held her ﬁnger and dragged her to the other side of the grave in

a ﬂuid motion. Pointing her hand towards the bold, dented words on the

nameplate, she urged the girl to read it out loud.

"Here lies Haruno Akira. Age 17"

*chakra prints occur when printer ink gets attached to the chakra concentrated

inside a body organ. most common places: feet and hands. It's about the

amount in that area over the surface area, not intensity. the chakra inside our

heart is more intense, but its ratio to the surface area of the chest in minimal

compared to the ratio of the chakra in our hands and feet. The printer ink

attaches to the surface with the highest ratio, sometimes if someone has

printed paper attached to their feet and they use chakra on their soils over a

surface, the ink transfers to the surface leaving a trail. Our genin used this to

their advantage while ﬁghting Kakashi in their beginning plan so he would have

to restrict his use of chakra so he wouldn't leave any trails. The paper has a

glue seal on the back that's chakra activated and lasts for 2 hours.

extra notes: There's more chakra ﬂow and pathways near the feet so they're

also great places for promoting smoother passage or disrupting the enemy's

chakra since they run closer to the skin compared to other body parts. The

rigth amount of pressure over the right place on the feet can do such

Also, in her ﬁrst plan Akira didn't want to use chakra suppressing seals

because they use foreign chakra to push back the chakra that emanates oﬀ

the body, essentially forming a barrier around the chakra using the automated

memory chakra has(something along the lines of retreating further inside the

body so foreign chakra can't corrupt or inﬁltrate it. That's usually why genjutsu

is especially hard to cast for genin, since they're not used to the responses of

the opponent's chakra to their own foreign one and end up missing the chakra

stream like nurses miss where they should puncture for and IV drip.) and that

would be detectable to Kakashi. The print papers used minimal chakra for a

glue seal on the back that would be too small to notice. Same thing as chakra

suppressants as with the restraining seals. I theorise that they clog the chakra

points in the places that expel chakra for movement, and they're basically

taking way a necessary energy element the muscles need to move. People

who have really good chakra control like Hyūgas or Iryō-nin can unclog their

points by poking holes in the clogs and expelling sharp concentrated chakra

from the points, but there's always the risk of damaging chakra points if done

wrong. Lower level restraining seals are available to Genin but on a limited

scale and more freely to Chunin. Jounin can begin making their own seals or

purchasing more advanced pre-made ones which are rare but so worth it.

Well, here is the new chapter, a week delayed. I'm not too happy with how I

write ﬁght scenes but I tried my best and this is the shitty result of my blood

sweat and tears.

Good news, I ﬁnally got myself to therapy and ho boy, do I have a lot of shit to

work through, starting with a deep running ptsd. fun fun fun!

also my CS ﬁnal exam is next week and we have a new teacher who's

spamming us with inheritance and classes and objects in python and trying to

teach us a structured programming language besides OOPs which is python

and C++. So...fun. I'm gonna ﬂunk out CS just when I got 95% on my

midterms. cries

See y'all next chapter, Arachne.

edited: Nov 14 2019, 2:07 am


	5. 5 Hospitalisation is a Bitch

Kakashi hovered between the rooms of Konoha general hospital, visiting the

bed-bound genin he brought over after the bell test.

The hospital was as he remembered; just with less gore. He would know. He

was in and out of the hospital constantly during the war, and patients littered

the blood-stained like parasites to rotting meat. Surgeries were carried out at

the check-in desk while a long line of soldiers clutching their guts and face

from falling to the ﬂoor waited at the side. Many of them ran out of time

waiting.

He had never been critically injured. Obito's Sharingan prevented him from

ever being too slow to save himself from spilling his guts on the ﬂoor.

He saw pregnant women cry tears of blood, crying over the corpse of their

child who was stabbed in an attack. Civilian lovers, taking back the deformed

bodies of their loved ones to cremate who would swallow their tears at the

burnt oﬀ skin or the hacked oﬀ cheek and stride out with pride.

It was pointless. It might sound hypocritical for him of everyone else - Kakashi

no sharingan, a dedicated Konoha shinobi - to complain about the

pointlessness of the will of ﬁre. Motivation-wise, one might disagree with him

on the basis of morals, but what for? For old fools like Hiruzen to make the

same mistakes over and over again until he is prompted into action? To make

the same mistakes that will kill more kids like the genin he assigns him?

Like Sasuke, Naruto and Akira?

No more. If he accepts a team, he will damn well make sure that they will be

as little a liability to themselves as possible so they will survive old men's

idiocy.

He slid open the door to Akira's door and went inside to ﬁnd the girl awake.

"When did you wake up?" He closed the door and sat down next to the

unresponsive girl

She was staring at nothing, eyes wide and staring oﬀ into an unseeable

distance. He nudged her and her snapped around immediately, chest shaking

with forced breaths.

"Hatake-san? How long have you been here?" She muttered, not quite in the

realm of reality yet.

"Not too long. Did you have any diﬃculties with the genjutsu?"

"The genjutsu..." She seemed more alert, "How did you do that?"

"It was a basic illusionary jutsu. Did you have trouble dispelling it?"

"No, no, no. You don't get it. How could you know my mindscape?" She

stared at him, still shaking, "How could you show me my mindscape in an

illusion when you've never seen it?!"

Kakashi put up his hands and nodded. Akira leaned back on the bed and

grasped her hair.

"I'm sure whatever it is it's nothing Akira-chan. You might be just tired from

test. It's better if you just rest and I'll visit your other teammates."

"Sorry Hatake-san."

"No oﬀense taken. Anyone who passes my bell test doesn't do it easily."

"Wait-"

He almost giggled at the girls tone as he walked towards the nearest open

window and jumped out.

He did say he would take on a mission if they passed after all.

Akira stayed at the hospital, voluntarily for the ﬁrst time in a long time. She

didn't particularly feel like getting out f bed. Even though Kakashi had told her

that he'd passed them, she still felt heavy. Almost as heavy as Sakura's bag

when she dropped at Kin's Wagashi store.

Speaking of the devil...

"Hope you're in the mood for some Dorayaki! Kin has this new thing she calls

'Ice cream' and she stuﬀed some Dorayaki in it. Just careful you don't spill

any! It's melted a bit." Sakura held a Dorayaki to her mouth with her hand

below to catch any spills. Akira caught the Dorayaki and put it on her lap,

gripping her sister's hand.

strawberry and cream

"You don't have to be here Sakura. I'll be okay."

"Oh shut up!" She shook her hand oﬀ and dug inside her backpack for an 8-

pack of mochi, "Try! It's this thing called 'chocolate chips' with crushed mint

leaves and cream." She held out a green mochi.

Akira, defeatedly took a bite and instantly grabbed the mochi out of her hand

and moaned.

"this...deserves a pedestal with Kami."

"Kin is Kami Akira. Don'y insult her again. Ever."

"duly noted. How ddi you exam go by the way?"

She laughed and pulled on her hair, "funny thing about that...you know how I

get this inner person sometimes popping above my head and all?"

"Inner! Your repressed sexual energy as a hormonal preteen!" Sakura squinted

at her sister, the squint slowly morphing into a killer glare.

"I have a ﬁst strong enough to fracture your spinal cord and I'm not afraid to

use it."

"I mean...your shiny beautiful personality not many people are civilised enough

to appreciate. yet. What about this rainbows-and-sunshine personality of

yours?"

"Close call Haruno. And it turns out that I've been casting genjutsu since inner

existed."

Akira slapped Sakura's arm and smirked, "No way! Are you some hidden

prodigy the world didn't know about before?!"

Sakura rolled her eyes with a wavering frown, "It's actually more common than

you think. one in ten children working with chakra or educationally exposed to

it have experienced this at some point, something to do with genetics and

inheritance."

"Well who knew. Your smarts actually are useful." Sakura whacked Akira on

the head and glared while Akira whimpered and whined.

"See?! This is why you're the smarter one!"

"Exactly you idiot! Now look in the mirror." Sakura nodded towards the mirror

across the room, showing an abnormally large inﬂation where she had hit her.

"I'm doing it."

"Of course dumbass. we're twins, so it's pretty possible we share the same

recessive gene for this."

"You should work for the world encyclopedia. for real."

"Too bad for me, I passed my sensei's test and She's starting training

tomorrow. Did I mention how cool Jingu-Sensei is?! I mean...She's done

everything! She's had medical training and she can hold her own in a battle so

well! Oh and she also does counselling besides actual psychotherapy!"

"honestly? I wouldn't want to deal with psychos all day. I'm enough of one

already."

She hit her on the back of the head

"Oh is this another insult-kami-sama-and-be-punished thing like Kin?"

"Look at you. Using your brain for something other than decorating the inside

of your skeleton."

"Gee I don't understand a word of that with all technical smarts sis."

"...That's it. I'm disowning you as my sister." Sakura made a dramatic show of

getting up and slowly walking out of the door.

"THEN WHO'S GONNA FEED ME KIN'S MOCHI WHEN I'M HALF A FOOT

CREMATED?!"

A nurse passing by her room threw up her eyebrows and shushed her

violently.

"This is a hospital not a family carnival kid!"

"Sorry..."

She waited until the nurse walked far away to stick her tongue out at the

empty door frame.

And then the heaviness overpowered the beating of her heart and she fell back

onto the bed again.

Heavy.

As if she were carrying a backpack ﬁlled to the brim with stones.

She put her arm over her eyes, shielding her view from the painfully white

ceiling she'd seen many times before. She knew she wouldn't cry; she'd been

in the same position hundreds of or even over a thousand times before and

now her kidney was starting to hurt and a warmth was ﬂooding her heart oh

god it beat fast-

The chakra scanner went haywire, blaring like the alarm of retreat in the middle

of a war.

Footsteps stormed into the room, removing her arm and revealing a mass of

people, dressed in sickly greens and hypothermic blues, shielding her view of

the white ceiling. They looked rushed, drenched with sweat and smelling of

sterile cleaners. Green ﬂashed over one's palm and she rushed it across her

chest, stopping at her heart chakra pathways.

"The cardiac pathways are being ﬂooded by the neural pathways." She

decreed as a matter of factly, "disrupt the ﬂow and force retreat the excess

chakra into a seal container. sealing medics?"

"what's wrong with her?!" Naruto pushed back against the hospital chunnin

security holding him back from bursting into the operation theatre they had

moved Akira into.

"Kid stop struggling! Your friend will be ﬁne." The chunnin shouted in between

Naruto's screams

"Naruto! Stop it you're just gonna make it worse!" Sakura yanked him back by

the wrist, "they didn't do anything. This happens a lot."

"How can you be so calm when your sister is being operated on Sakura-

chan?"

"It's not the ﬁrst time. Deﬁnitely not the last."

"but she was ﬁne! Kakashi-sensei visited her and she was ﬁne!"

"Well your sensei isn't a medic is he?!" She intensiﬁed her glare, the venom

crawling over his face like a second skin, sending goosebumps down his neck

and beating drums of blood in his ears.

Killing intent.

She blinked, the killer intent disappearing along side her glare, but the tone of

her voice remained grave.

"This is our family matter Naruto. I would appreciate it if you left this to us. Our

parents will be here soon and I'm not having you worry them even more with

your unnecessary screaming. Go back to your ward please." She let go of his

wrist sharply and turned towards the operation theatre.

Naruto couldn't get that word from repeating inside his head.

family.

That's right. He wasn't family. He hadn't even known her long, or enough to be

deserving of waiting along side her family.

Who did he think he was, trying to look like he cared, when he didn't even

know who he was caring for? No matter how friendly, or likeable someone

was, you didn't care for everyone. No, you either gave so much of yourself

away as a person, or cared yourself into slavery as a hero.

And everyone knew he was no hero. Especially himself.

After all, no hero has a monster inside them self that can unleash hell on

everyone.

and so he left and lay on his bed,

And forced himself to sleep.

"Neurtal chakra pathways were ﬂooding the cardiac

pathways...yes...expanded coils...arrhythmia...unﬁltered chakra seeped into

heart tissue."

"Is she going to be alright?"

had mom cried?

"her coils have expanded. Exponentially. She might cause an overload on her

heart again if she uses chakra intensively."

"Is there anything that will aid with the healing process?"

"No severe chakra draining exercises. we need to keep the chakra levels as

stable as possible to minimalise coil activity aside from bodily function

drainage."

"Understood. Thank you."

She opened her eyes when she was certain the medic was gone.

"Akira-chan...you're awake." Mebuki speed walked to the bed.

"Disappointed?" She raised an eyebrow jokingly, but instantly regretted it

when her parents' faces twisted painfully like they were just shot in the

stomach.

"Too soon. Sorry. Can I just hug you?" Without a question the man and wife

wrapped around her, trying and failing to conceal the little drops they were

wiping oﬀ her hair when they combed her hair.

The kisses didn't lie. They were expecting her to die any moment, and maybe

a part of what made her feel like this...was this exact reaction. This feeling of

being suﬀocated in her mother's lavender scent and her father's coﬀee

breath, when she thought she would be comforted. Wanting to feel any love

for them at the moment, or any pity, but instead having an intense hatred

boiling inside of you like a volcano ready to explode and rain magma over the

living for centuries of a burning hell. It was like she was drowning, in her own

hatred and guilt of it and she couldn't say anything because of everything she

would be labelled as if she lashed out at her self-sacriﬁcing, lovingly

aﬀectionate and wholly dedicated saint-like parents the world din't seem to

get enough of.

Don't get her wrong, she loved them.

But that didn't stop the resentment from growing, nor the lines keeping her

strings of sanity from tying together and threading manically around her

consciousness.

It didn't stop a part of her, albeit small, from resenting them because of how

much they enjoy being admired at her expense. Of how much of a victim they

made her out to be instead of supporting her and letting her choose her own

path.(They lost contact for a while after Aurora took her because they

disagreed with the pathway Aurora wanted her to take as a kunoichi.)

She broke away from the hug and covered herself with the duvet, smiling at

them both.

"It's getting pretty late out there. I think it's better if you all go home and visit

me tomorrow."

Mebuki and Kizashi exchanged a look and then nodded, leaning closer to give

her a kiss each, "If you wanted us here just call the house phone will you?"

She lingered.

Akira watched them disappear into the hallways of the hospital and then let

out a sigh she'd been holding for a while, hands trembling and ﬁsts pressuring

her eyes so tears wouldn't escape. She urged herself not to think about it, that

she already had lived a lot compared to some people, but nothing could stop a

steady stream of tears and the inaudible whimpers.

Sasuke had already woken up when Naruto went back to their shared room.

He was sat up in his bed with a scroll open on his lap that seemed to talk

about advanced Gokakyu control.

"Where were you dobe?"

"Running from my pyromaniac teammate. For real though, Akira just had

surgery."

"How did it go?" he didnt seem shocked.

"I...didn't stay long enough for that. Family only." Sasuke nodded with

understanding.

"Why are we talking?" Naruto raised an eyebrow.

"I decided to try out what you usually refer to as 'kindness'."

"Wow. I'm blessed. Sasuke-kun just blessed me with his ﬁrstborn."

"Don't make me regret it dobe. One sarcastic loser is enough for this village."

"Gee you bastard. what ever made you use your brain to socialise?"

Sasuke huﬀed and turned his eyes on the scroll again, "I didn't think you had

the required intelligence to comprehend sarcasm let alone use it."

"My sarcasm is limited to everyone who isn't you. Recently including you

'cause who doesn't love being paired with the person you've hated for the

whole of your formal education."

"I don't particularly like you either, but I suppose if we're going to survive each

other we need to come to an understanding."

"What happened to your, 'I work alone you foolish mortals!' attitude?"

"Do you think I would ever work with you given the choice?"

"And you're saying?"

"We don't have a choice. We work as a team until we all make Chunnin and

then we never have to talk to each other again." He held out his hand, "Deal or

no deal?"

"Sounds good to me. But I'm accepting on one condition!" Naruto

grinned, "We'll have a match after making Chunnin."

Sasuke looked at his hand and smirked, "Don't count on winning dobe."

She had just been discharge form the hospital and folding her clothes when

we heard a tap on the balcony door.

A toad and a butterﬂy both waiting behind the spot-less balcony window. the

toad had unusually vibrant colour for his skin and had blue paint marking the

outline of his mouth and eye sockets. His butterﬂy companion was unusually

proportioned for a butterﬂy, appearing more as a moth than anything. She

knew from Aurora's rants that Aiya was a skipper butterﬂy, and specialised in

guerilla tactics and message delivery, but the butterﬂy summons relied more

on swift poison application than direct attacks.

After a few years of being with Aiya, she still couldn't not laugh at Aurora's bad

naming skills. She remembers how excited Aurora was when Negawa had

sent her apprentice to her "to get acquainted with the summoner world", and

how the ﬁrst thing she shouted when the summoning smoke cleared, was

"You could be a fur model goddammit!".

Hence the name 'Aiya'. Essentially 'beautiful silk'.

"Gamakichi. Aiya. What's up?" She opened the balcony and a wave of cold air

seeped her body heat

"You look rad. What happened kid?" Gamakichi crawled inside and Aiya

landed on Akira's bed, crawling under the blanket.

" got my ass handed to me by this guy." She pointed at a drawing of Kakashi

she had thrown into her basement box, "'Twas fun."

"Bet it was. do you have any nectar per chance? it's getting really cold at

nights."

"Sure. You're delivering my medicine, yeah?" Aiya's antenna pointed to the

balcony and Akira went over to get the package. She almost jumped when the

new Icha Icha book caught her eyes (it wasn't even on the shelves yet!) but

managed to hold herself back just as Gamakichi remarked on it.

"Jiraya sent the new book kid. He was hoping you would write him about the

unedited content."

"I wish he would stop sending me his perverted novels. How come Aurora-

Sensei didn't knock some sense into him?"

"She did, that's the thing. Three punches and the boy was out cold, but he

insisted that you should read it."

"I'm not even at the age of consent yet that blasted..." She huﬀed

"I could always take it back and tell him you don't want it." Akira shook her

head trying not to appear as if she enjoyed the novel at all, "It's ﬁne. He did

ask me to proof-red it for him after all."

"Gah kid!Just say if you like them!"

"Of course I don't! What do you think I am, a pervert?!"

"If you could both shut up and get me some nectar?" Akira took the

chance and dashed out of the room into the kitchen.

Her mother kept the small kitchen extremely clean. it was her safe place and

she would be caught dead if she allowed a single stain to ﬁnd its way in her

territory. She frequently kept ﬂowers and left the window open so stray bees

would have a food source, and most summers she would buy berry bushes

from the local gardener and plant them beneath the kitchen window so she

could always reﬁll the fruit bowl by the window.

She opened the ﬁlled kitchen and took out a large packet of nectar she had

isolated earlier for Aiya knowing she would ask for some. She noticed that her

delivery was still in her hands, so she opened the letter stapled to the pack.

Akira,

Congratulations for becoming a Genin, I heard you got Kakashi as your Jounin

teacher. I hope you kicked his ass for the survival test! You didn't write to me

to tell me about your team, so write to me soon. You're missed in Kusa. Jiraiya

is missing you too, but you know he won't admit it. Knucklehead. Anyway, you

are a Kunoichi now. You are going to come across many events that will

deﬁne your visions as a Kunoichi, and in developing these ideal you are bound

to get hurt. I don't doubt in my teachings or your ability to take care of

yourself, but do take extra care of yourself dear, your career will mean nothing

if you are too weak to carry out your missions and that also includes your

mental health. I sent you some medicine, it will take away your pain and help

you restore your chakra, and your usual pills are in the bigger container along

side a bag of solider pills (don't worry about the costs, it's nothing compared

to my shopping). If things are good for some more time in Kusagakure, I will

come and give you a visit (and possibly drag Jiraiya along with me, but no

promises) .

Take care,

Aurora-Sensei.

Gee she went all out, thought Akira. She would have to go all out on her

birthday. now, the butterﬂy mistress loved her birthday as it was both a day

she could celebrate her age in reverse and spend non-stop without her

ﬁnancial advisors complaining about her thinning inheritance. Akira made the

mistake of telling her that she would like it if they didn't celebrate her birthday

when Aurora called her in for birthday plans and oh boy...did she get an earful.

In short Aurora is a birthday maniac. Mostly because of the unlimited spending

and the cake. The cake especially with extra cream. It could get heaving

carrying cash around so she had been, for the last few years dreaming about

virtual money that could be stored in a slip for long periods of time.

Maybe one day, electricity was proving to be useful for more than fridges and

powering homes and ninjas had been taking up a surveillance method with

hidden cameras powered by electricity connected to powerful computers.

Perhaps one day.

She walked up to her room with the nectar and sat down next to Aiya on her

bedsheets, punching a hole in the plastic container with a metallic straw. Aiya

took long sips from the nectar, letting it dissolve in her mouth and for the

ﬂavour to kick in. She shot Akira a look of gratitude and she smiled. Violets

and roses were her favourite mixture and it wasn't too hard juicing them for

nectar with chakra.

"Gamakichi...do you know when Jiraya will be here?"

"What? Wanting to review his work in person?" Gamakichi let out an

obnoxious snort

Akira rolled her eyes, "For this boy I'm friends with. He taught the fourth

Hokage didn't he?"

"Yeah. And?"

Akira paused to choose her words, "He idolises the fourth. I thought some

motivation might do him some good, he's my teammate after all."

"The blond one who was being huggy with you?"

"yeah the huggy colour clash." She feigned a shudder, "A true horror

manifestation."

"Got you kid. I'll tell your teacher and she can write to you ﬁrst chance."

Gamakichi got up from his resting position and moved towards the balcony,

"For now, we have to go. It was nice seeing you again kid. Don't get killed."

"How moving. Don't forget Aiya." She looked at the butterﬂy glaring at them

from behind the straw.

"Move it moth." Aiya rolled her numerous eyes at the toad and clung onto her

nectar harder.

"Kami...how do you put up with her kid?!"

Akira swallowed a snicker and replied with feigned unknowing, "What do you

mean? Aiya is an angel."

Aiya widened her numerous eyes obnoxiously at Gamakichi.

Omake:

Kakashi almost ﬂipped, come the morning of their ﬁrst team training session.

Akira was still hospitalized (did he feel any guilt? nooooooo) and he didn't have

nearly enough time to train all of them to an acceptable level of proﬁciency

until the Chunnin exams (when he would hopefully be rid of them once and for

all).

Then Kami decided to play a little bit. A string pulled here and one there, he

was staring at Naruto and Sasuke mentoring each other before he had even

arrived for training.

He repeated.

Naruto. Sasuke. Working. Together.

He stressed.

Working together doesn't belong in a sentence where Naruto and Sasuke are

used together.

for that stunt he decided to appear earlier. He was met with Naruto screaming

at him and Sasuke glaring at him from a few metres away but the point stood.

They went back to working together after Naruto was done screaming at him.

It was peculiar to say the least, but he didn't complain. The two obviously still

hated each other, that must was apparent from how they were basically trying

to kill each other with 1000 Shuriken-throwing clones and consecutive grand

ﬁreball executions. Whatever they were doing though, he wished it would go

on forever. His ears were having a beach holiday from the arguing.

Fast forward one week, they have mastered the tree walking exercise and

Naruto's aim has improved signiﬁcantly (he suspected the 1000 Shuriken-

throwing clones to have something to do with this development). Sasuke had

improved his chakra control and was trying to move onto water walking.

Oh and did he mention that Akira was late for training?

He swore destruction on the girl. He was determined to test their chakra

natures by the end of training today and cover some elemental manipulation

theory so they could move on to more advanced elemental chakra

manipulation than just 'winging it' so to say.

fast forward one hour later at 8 am, a disheveled Akira appeared on the other

side of the bridge leading to the training ground, and ran in desperation just so

maybe if her sensei saw her attempts at being on time despite an alarm clock

prank pulled by Gamakichi that toad- ahem, she wouldn't receive any

punishment.

that, or maybe Kin's new mochi ﬂavour would do the trick. Either way, for any

of those to work she would have to ﬁnd Kakashi ﬁrst.

Objective: Find Kakashi

Reward:10% chance of escaping punishment if he's feeling generous or is in a

good mood

Actions:Look around

You looked around

Kakashi found. Mission complete.

Akira ran towards Kakashi with an apology planned out in her mind, when she

saw Naruto and Sasuke reading together under a tree's shade.

She repeated.

.Together.

She stressed.

Working. Together. Also Naruto reading at all.

"What drug did you slip them Sensei?" She whispered loud enough only for

the Jounin to hear.

"I share the exact same notion."

"Does that mean-"

"You are still running your twenty laps. every minute above 15 minutes is

another lap."

"Evil."

"Five extra laps!"

Akira dropped the mochi and rushed.

*(Just forcing the chakra back would both overﬂow the chakra pathways and it

would burst out of the coils and damage them and also damage the fabric of

the pathway. Solution would be to make a small indent at the base of the

chakra pathways to place a seal that the excess chakra will escape

to(concentration ratios) Concentration ratios are basically what keep the

chakra(ratio) ﬂowing inside the pathways. Even if there's more chakra

somewhere, if its ratio is uneven it keep ﬂowing. For this to happen, the chakra

pathways should be at least a little empty and that's where the bodily

functions come through. That's why people in the Narutoverse are generally

faster thinkers and have sturdier bodies. Their bodies take oﬀ the cap of their

chakra from their pathways and vessel(vessel connected to pathway, where

chakra starts to go in another direction ad changes halves between the body.

located below the heart where the most concentration is. chakra pathway runs

through the vessel and delivers chakra to the other side. There are much

smaller internal coils that transfer chakra from the vessel whenever the

immediate pathways are emptying and the body takes a small amount to keep

the ﬂow and this is the chakra ﬂow). Her neural pathways are ﬂooding her

cardiac pathways. When she was feeling tired, it was her empty cap slowly

being ﬁlled and her chakra ﬂow slowing down. It was ﬁlled for a moment and

then it ﬁlled over the limit and started to stretch her cardiac pathways which

stretched her coils and chakra came in direct contact with her heart without

being ﬁltered and when it was much more intense than the heart can handle.

An enemy can send a surge of chakra ﬁltered closely to the enemy's type and

ﬂood the chakra pathway to the cap, essentially stopping the ﬂow and killing

an enemy by ﬁlling their empty cap with chakra. It can't be their own foreign

chakra because chakra retreats(becomes more concentrated and goes deeper

into the pathway and further away from the coil so you actually have to

practise calling on chakra when someone is inﬁltrating your network since it's

harder to call on chakra that's further away than normal.). Intense chakra has

more energy per cm cubed and is stronger. It's easier to manipulate since it's

easier to feel and locate it. Intensity increases through training so chakra will

get accustomed to holding more energy but that also means a faster

metabolism and a bigger need for food. But you can only improve until a

certain point. Children from shinobi backgrounds have a more intense chakra

than the ones from civillian background since intensity is also inherited from

parents. Chakra is inside the sperm and the egg in the womb, but it remains in

the storage tissue inside the womb, until the pathways develop and it can ﬂow

into the pathways to make the chakra network. INtensity is a mixture of both

parents' chakra then. It is harder to hide, so most recon and assassination

shinobi tend to dilute their chakra, but increase their reserves to make up for

the lack of intensity.

Wagashi: Japanese sweets

And this is everything i spent my energy on ﬁguring out when I should've been

studying. Sue me. But it was worth it (loreal ad: Because you're worth it).

Anyway, hope you missed all of my spelling, punctuation and grammar errors

for I am much to overworked and much too stressed to edit them on my own. I

also almost posted spoilers on the parts we haven't re edited yet so that was

close.

until another excessively delayed chapter my lovelies,

Ara-chan.


End file.
